LEARNING  TO  EARN 

A  Plea  and  a  Plan  for  Vocational  Education 

By 
JOHN  A.  LAPP 

Member  of  the  National  Commission  on  Vocational  Education,  Secretary 

Indiana  Commission  on  Industrial  and  Agricultural  Education. 

Director  of  the  Bureau  of  Legislative  Information 

and 

CARL  H.  MOTE 

Author  of  Industrial  Arbitration 


With  Introduction  by 

HON.  WILLIAM  C.  REDFIELD 

Secretary  of  Commerce 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright  1915 
The  Bobbs-Merrill  Company 


PRESS     OF 

BRAUNWORTH    &    CO. 

BOOKBINDERS    AND    PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN.    N.   Y. 


INTRODUCTION 

We  are  as  a  people  the  Wasters  of  the  World 
and  are  the  Prodigal  Son  among  the  Nations.  We 
save  enormously  every  year  but  waste  far  more 
than  we  save.  It  seems  to  be  in  our  national  tem- 
perament almost  to  rejoice  in  the  prodigality  with 
which  we  expend  our  resources  or  in  the  happy  care- 
lessness with  which  we  allow  them  to  go  unused. 

We  do  not  confine  ourselves,  however,  to  wasting 
material  things.     We  waste  life  as  no  others  do. 

The  annual  toll  of  those  who  are  killed  and 
wounded  by  vehicles  in  the  streets  of  New  York 
alone  would  dim  the  records  of  many  a  sanguinary 
battlefield.  Many  a  war  has  come,  has  run  its 
bloody  course  and  has  ended  without  as  many  vic- 
tims in  killed  and  wounded  as  our  industries  show 
each  year.  There  are  among  us  excellent  people 
quite  disturbed  over  bloodshed  in  time  of  war  who 
have  little  to  say  respecting  the  bloodshed  in  times 
of  peace.  It  is  true  that  "safety  first"  is  becoming 
a  familiar  motto,  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  warning 
falls  too  often  on  heedless  ears  and  that  the  daily 
sacrifice  goes  on. 

There  are  ways  of  wasting  however,  very  sad 
ways  of  wasting  indeed,  which  the  above  do  not  in- 
clude. There  is  a  way  of  killing  the  best  in  life 
while  the  body  goes  on  living,  and  we  have  been  sin- 


355231 


INTRODUCTION 

gularly  skilful  in  these  injurious  processes.^  It  is 
easy  to  smile  at  the  savage  who  sets  up  his  grotesque 
totem  pole,  believing  that  thereby  he  secures  the 
protection  of  the  friendly  spirits,  but  there  are 
national  totems  as  well  as  tribal  and  individual  ones, 
and  there  is  a  certain  danger  that  we  may  worship 
them  nearly  or  quite  as  blindly  as  the  savage  at 
whom  we  smile. 

When  we  look  with  frankness  and  without  bias 
at  the  results  in  terms  of  life  of  what  we  are  pleased 
to  call  education,  the  question  will  naturally  arise 
whether  this  thing  of  which  we  are  so  proud  is  not 
as  respects  most  of  those  who  are  subjected  to  its 
processes  something  of  a  grotesque  totem  set  on  a 
pole  for  us  unintelligently  to  admire.  True  it  works 
admirably  for  the  few.  That  is,  for  the  few  reck- 
oned in  proportion  to  the  whole.  One  would  not 
lightly  minimize  its  value  for  this  small  proportion 
of  our  people  nor  say  aught  that  would  injure  the 
justly  high  estimation  in  which  the  fine  work  of  the 
instructor  in  many  a  useful  institution  is  held.  The 
value  of  his  services  to  the  public  is  such  as  to 
make  us  desire  to  widen  its  scope  and  extend  its 
benign  influence.  The  difficulty  is  that  the  fruitful 
work  of  the  educator  reaches  at  its  best  far  too 
small  a  minority  among  us  while  it  is  essential, 
deeply  essential  that  its  influence  should  be  vastly 
extended. 

When  it  is  pointed  out  that  a  half  million  physical 
lives  or  more  are  lost  among  us  each  year  through 
preventable  disease,  we  feel  a  certain  sense  of  shock 


INTRODUCTION 

and  the  publicist  comes  to  the  aid  of  preventive  med- 
icine to  say  these  things  ought  not  so  to  be  and  to 
join  in  strong  and  unselfish  attack  on  the  conditions 
that  permit  such  things  to  continue. 

We  are  just  beginning  to  realize  that  by  the 
failure  of  some  phases  of  our  educational  systems  to 
meet  the  living  needs  of  living  boys  and  girls,  we 
are  permitting  them  to  enter  a  sort  of  death  in  life 
which  is  having  most  hurtful  effects  on  our  country. 
Our  complacency  over  the  value  of  the  common 
school  to  our  people  is  being  rudely  disturbed,  for 
many  if  not  most  of  our  young  people  emerge  from 
that  same  common  school  quite  without  adjustment 
to  the  daily  life  they  must  thereafter  lead,  and  al- 
most if  not  altogether  without  the  training  fitting 
them  for  the  workaday  world  in  which  they  must 

There  is  no  (Ravage  between  vocational  educatij|^ 
and  academic  eoucation  nor  aught  of  hostility.  Thfe 
two  are  fellows  and  akin.  They  stand  in  a  helpfui 
and  not  in  a  hurtful  relation  one  to  the  otherN  Nay, 
it  is  because  academic  education  at  its  best  has  pro- 
duced such  noble  fruits  that  the  need  is  more  mani- 
fest for  the  other  type  of  training  for  those  who  in 
different  spheres  find  academic  education  neither 
practicable  nor  essential."  The  life  in  industry,  in 
trades,  in  the  home,  on  the  farm,  needs  and  does  not 
yet  receive  the  corresponding  training  in  principle 
and  practise  that  is  giveri  to  the  lawyer,  the  physi- 
cian and  the  engineer.  It  is  not  the  same  education 
that  is  needed  for  all  these  either  in  kind  or  in  de- 


INTRODUCTION 

gree,  but  it  is  similar  in  spirit  and  in  purpose  and 
has  for  its  outlook  that  the  student  shall  be  prepared 
for  the  environment  which  is  normal  to  him. 

Therefore,  this  book  is  to  be  commended  as  a 
thoughtful  study  concerning  things  that  are  greatly 
needed  among  us,  and  as  giving  an  impetus  to 
thought  that  can  only  be  helpful.  None  of  us  can 
be  satisfied  to  allow  things  to  remain  educationally 
as  they  are ;  to  permit  our  children  to  go  out  into  a 
life  which  is  a  blind  alley;  to  reach  a  mental  "im- 
passe" before  maturity  is  well  begun.  The  path  of 
danger  lies  that  way,  and  he  renders  a  service  to  his 
country  who  calls  a  halt  and  directs  our  thinking  as 
to  how  we  may  avoid  the  peril.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  when  we  come  to  realize  the  need  for 
greater  extensiveness  of  training  for  the  work  of 
life  both  for  men  and  women,  we  shall  take  the 
steps  which  shall  make  that  not  only  possible  but 
certain.  To  this  happy  progress  this  book  points  the 
way.  Let  us  hope  it  will  have  wide-spread  and 
careful  reading. 

William  C.  Redfield. 

Washington,  D.  C. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  What  Are  the  Purposes  of  Education?  .  .  1 
New  applications  of  old  ideals — Education  as 
adjustment  to  environment — What  adjust- 
ment means — Self-preservation — Earning  a 
living — Citizenship — Home  training — Com- 
mercial activities — Education  for  the  con- 
sumer— Education  for  leisure — Progressive 
education  needed  to  meet  modern  means. 

II    Passing  Education  Around 21 

Democracy's  demand  for  equality  of  educa- 
tional opportunity — Adjustment  to  environ- 
ment must  be  universal — Individual  and  en- 
vironment are  variable — Education  to  extend 
throughout  life:— Putting  knowledge  to  work 
— Training  people  at  Work — Capa'city  of  all 
for  training — Outline  of  a'  universal  scheme 
— Vocational  education  essential — Influences 
which  have  thwarted  universal  education — 
Examples  to  follow — Some  critics  answered. 

Ill  Wherein  the  Present  System  Fails  ...  39 
Statistics  of  school  attendance — Why  chil- 
dren leave  school — Neglect  of  life-career  mo- 
tive— What  does  education  do  for  those  who 
quit  school  early? — Schools  fail  to  train  for 
self-preservation — Little  vocational  training 
— Rural  education  unsuited  to  needs — The 
weaknesses  of  agricultural  colleges — Devel- 
opment of  agricultural  science — Science  of 
commerce  and  industry  still  dormant — Im- 
portant education  obtainable  only  in  nooks 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

and  corners — Schools  train  for  higher  grades 
— No  stopping  place — Education  stops  at  the 
school  door — Results  of  education  obtainable 
only  by  a  few — The  raw  materials  to  work 
upon. 

IV  Industry  and  Its  Educational  Needs  ...  60 
The  economic  and  social  basis  of  industrial 
progress — Lack  of  skilled  workers — Exploita- 
tion of  our  natural  resources — Collapse  of 
trade  union  apprenticeship — Opposition  to  the 
corporation  trade  school — Chaos  in  industry 
— Waste  caused  by  industrial  unrest — Coop- 
eration is  the  ultimate  goal — The  problem  of 
monotony  in  employment — Training  for  ac- 
cident prevention — Our  industrial  history  is 
ignored  in  the  schools — The  importance  of  a 
thoroughgoing  survey  of  industry. 

V    Agriculture  and  Its  Educational  Needs     .     .      89 
'  Food  production  has  failed  to  keep  pace  with 

the  increase  in  population — Our  farm  yields 
are  far  below  those  of  European  countries — 
Farm  is  unattractive  as  a  business  opportu- 
nity—Distribution facilities  are  inadequate — 
Greater  production  in  the  aggregate  means 
lower  prices — Cooperative  marketing  is  a  sci- 
entific undertaking  and  a  problem  for  trained 
minds — Why  rural  education  is  uninteresting 
— Agricultural  colleges  and  practical  farming 
— Keeping  the  boy  on  the  farm — The  prob- 
lems of  tenantry,  transient  laborers  and  ma- 
ture workers — Agricultural  credit — Farm  ac- 
counting— Diversified  farming — Expenditures 
for  roads  —  Conservation  in  agriculture  — 
Vision  and  inspiration  count — Careful  train- 
ing essential. 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI  Business  and  Its  Educational  Needs  .  .  .  116 
Four  fundamental  processes  of  business — 
Distribution  is  vital  to  the  economic  progress 
of  the  nation — Exploitation  of  natural  re- 
sources no  longer  possible — Specific  educa- 
tion for  the  science  of  business  is  needed — 
All  classes  should  become  familiar  with  ele- 
mentary business  practises — Agencies  of  edu- 
cation have  failed  to  grasp  commercial  prob- 
lems— Certain  aspects  of  foreign  trade — 
Germany's  commercial  prestige  founded  on 
the  careful  training  of  commercial  workers — 
Our  need  of  trained  consuls — Seven  million 
people  depend  upon  "picking-up"  process  of 
education — Our  commercial  failures  are  in- 
creasing— Our  lack  of  self-reliance — Labor 
efficiency  is  a  matter  of  simplified  effort — 
Mismanagement  of  railroads — Training  for 
salesmanship  —  Advertising  —  Our  banking 
system  is  inadequate — Commercial  education 
in  Germany — Our  educational  needs. 


VII    Training  for  the  Home 

Woman's  chief  vocational  interest  is  the 
home — Effect  of  industrial  changes  on  the 
work  of  the  home — Lack  of  a  scientific  ap- 
proach— Meager  efforts  of  the  schools  to 
train  efficiently  for  the  duties  of  the  home — 
Variations  in  the  curriculum — General  out- 
line of  training:  food,  clothing,  fashions, 
building,  house  furnishing,  sanitation,  the 
garden,  marketing,  care  of  infants,  common 
remedies — Music  as  a  vocation  and  an  inci- 
dental interest — Education  will  lighten  the 
burdens  of  the  home. 


I43 


(ty 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

,  VIII  Vocational  Education  and  Conservation  .  .  164 
The  waste  of  resources — Direct  losses — Indi- 
rect losses — Mining — Lumbering — Soils — In- 
sect pests — Animal  diseases — Weeds — Lack 
of  drainage — Agricultural  production  too 
small — Export  raw  materials  instead  of  fin- 
ished products — Waste  of  human  resources — 
Child  wastage — Preventable  diseases — Acci- 
dents in  occupations — Diseases  of  occupa- 
tions— Conserving  health  and  strength — Ef- 
ficiency. 

Prevocational  Training 182 

Elementary  education  most  important — Ac- 
quiring tools  of  knowledge  —  Education 
should  function  in  daily  life — Child  who  does 
not  keep  up  is  not  abnormal,  only  different — 
Correlation  of  studies — Elements  of  more 
things  should  be  utilized — Practical  arts 
should  be  compulsory  to  all — Wasted  years 
from  fourteen  to  sixteen — Prevocational 
courses  to  fill  the  gap — Not  only  vocational 
but  also  guidance  courses  to  be  given. 

-X™\The  Place  of  the  Vocational  School  .  .  .  197 
The  place  of  the  vocational  school — Takes 
place  of  apprenticeship — Extent  of  vocational 
schools  —  Professional  schools  —  Vocational 
schools  for  defectives  and  delinquents — Need 
for  vocational  schools  for  the  great  mass  of 
workers — Requirements — Open  to  all  who  can 
profit  by  the  instruction — To  prepare  all- 
round  workers — Must  be  practical — Supply 
deficiencies  of  apprenticeship  —  Needs  for 
many  kinds  of  vocational  schools — The  heart 
of  the  vocational  education  system. 


• 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XI    Part-Time  Education     .........    213 

Needs  of  youth  who  quit  school — Schools 
must  supply  further  education  if  workers  are 
to  progress — School  has  heretofore  stopped 
at  factory  door — Continuation  courses  to 
help  misfits — Trade  extension  courses  to  in- 
crease efficiency — Supplementary  training  re- 
quires correlation  of  study  with  the  occupa- 
tion— Analysis  of  occupations  needed — Part- 
time  education  useful  to  adults — Evening 
schools — Courses  need  to  be  practical  and 
definite. 

XII  Extension  and  Correspondence  Work  ...  231 
The  place  of  correspondence  and  extension 
work  in  the  educational  system — What  has 
been  accomplished — Private  correspondence 
schools — Demonstration  shops  and  labora- 
tories necessary  for  concrete  direction — Itin- 
erant teachers — Three  types  of  correspond- 
ence schools — Project  system  of  instruction 
— Maintenance  of  centers  of  instruction — 
Personal  assistance  necessary — Special  op- 
portunities in  business  training  by  corre- 
spondence— The  chamber  of  commerce — 
Centers  for  home  training — Agricultural 
education  by  correspondence — The  place  of 
the  university  in  correspondence  and  exten- 
sion work. 

f       XIII  \  The  Library  and  the  Worker 249 

y/      Part  of  the  library  in  universal  education — 

\--  Printed    matter    is    universal    in    scope — All 

classes  should  be  served — Libraries  weak  on 
the  vocational  side — Useful  arts  departments 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

successful — Branches  in  industrial  and  mer- 
cantile plants — Chicago's  experience — The 
Marshall  Field  Store  library — Practical  value 
of  correlated  reading — Library  for  agricul- 
ture— Vocational  guidance  literature. 

XIV    Vocational  Guidance 262 

Occupational  divisions — Educational  effort  is 
centered  on  the  few — Jefferson  as  a  voca- 
tional counselor — New  conditions  demand 
highly  specialized  training — Doctor  Parsons' 
precepts  in  the  selection  of  a  vocation — 
Psychological  aspects  of  vocational  selection 
— Vocational  guidance  and  conservation — 
Futility  of  "compulsory  education" — Purpose 
of  vocational  guidance — Economic  loss  from 
lack  of  trained  workers — A  wise  choice  of 
vocations  is  essential  in  a  democracy — Pro- 
tection of  the  child  involves  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  conditions  surrounding  work 
— Aids  to  an  industrial  survey — Summary. 

XV    Training  of  Teachers     ........    285 

Lack  of  trained  teachers  for  vocational  work 
— Need  of  practical  experience — Experience 
in  teaching  and  experience  in  life — Prejudice 
to  be  overcome — Wasted  efforts  from  unedu- 
cated and  inefficient  teachers — Various  plans 
for  training  teachers — The  present  public- 
school  teacher  is  not  equipped  for  instruc- 
tion in  agriculture,  the  skilled  trades  or 
household  arts — Active  business  men  may  be 
drawn  upon  for  teaching  in  commercial 
schools — Shortcomings  of  the  rural  teachers 
•—Only  one  in  five  teachers  is  trained — How 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

sociological  surveys  may  widen  the  vision  of 
the  untrained  teacher — Summer  schools,  cor- 
respondence schools  and  extension  work  as 
supplemental  aids. 

XVI    How  Shall  the  Obligation  Be  Met?     ...     309 

More  money  needed  when  education  becomes 
universal — The  historical  development  of  lo- 
cal theory  of  education — The  growth  of  state 
supervision — State  aid — National  aid — Sys- 
tems of  aid  most  efficient  plan — National  im- 
portance of  vocational  education — Competi- 
tive trade — Social  unrest — Agricultural  de- 
velopment— New  burdens — Imminence  of  the 
problem — States  and  communities  alone  can 
not  meet  the  needs  quickly  enough — Differ- 
ences of  financial  abilities — Team  play  of  the 
nation,  states  and  local  units  needed — The 
proposal  before  Congress  for  national  aid. 


XVlf?  Work  and  Culture 327 


What  is  culture? — The  medieval  conception 
of  culture — Introduction  of  manual  training 
and  of  the  occupational  interests  into  the  cur- 
riculum— The  social  difference  in  vocations 
and  the  explanation — Culture  closely  related 
to  thorough  and  carefully  planned  methods 
of  doing  work — Art  and  artisans — Homely 
evidences  of  culture — Economic  phases  of 
culture — Erroneous  notions  of  culture — Cul- 
ture for  our  working  hours — Universal  edu- 
cation wholly  unrealized — Education  must 
dovetail  into  the  life-work  of  boys  and  girls. 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVIII    Training  for  Citizenship 344 

Measure  of  vocational  education — Its  uni- 
versal scope — An  indictment  of  the  present 
system — Fails  to  develop  latent  potentialities 
for  industrial,  agricultural,  commercial  and 
domestic  work — Relationship  between  ef- 
ficient workmanship  and  citizenship — Effect 
of  habit  on  education — Economic  aggressions 
due  to  political  power — Wherein  classical 
education  fails — Aimless  drifting  into  over- 
crowded professions  and  the  result — Our 
wasteful  and  bad  government — People  fail 
in  the  simplest  duties — Individual  efficiency 
means  social  efficiency — When  education  is 
pointless,  the  level  of  citizenship  falls — The 
failure  of  public  servants  because  of  ignor- 
ance— Specific  training  for  citizenship — 
Teaching  the  morals  of  good  citizenship. 

XIX    The  Ideal  School 366 

Socializing  the  school — Meeting  the  needs  of 
all — No  age  limits  to  its  service — All  educa- 
tion at  public  expense  and  under  public  man- 
agement— Studying  the  vocations — Charting 
blind  alleys — Keeping  abreast  of  the  times — 
Outline  of  plan — Working  with  workers — 
The  fruits. 

Bibliography 381 

Organizations     Interested     in     Vocational 
Training 393 

Index        397 


LEARNING  TO  EARN 


Learning  to  Earn 

CHAPTER  I 

WHAT  ARE  THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION? 

New  applications  of  old  ideals — Education  as  adjustment  to 
environment — What  adjustment  means — Self-preservation — 
Earning  a  living — Citizenship — Home  training — Commercial 
activities — Education  for  the-  consumer — Education  for  leisure 
— Progressive  education  needed  to  meet  modern  needs. 

Progress  in  human  affairs  makes  necessary  a. con- 
stant restatement  of  principles  in  terms  which  are 
applicable  to  new  conditions.  By  such  restatement 
only  can  certain  principles  endure  in  the  every-day 
world.  Those  principles  which  can  not  be  made 
guides  for  common  good  under  changed  conditions 
are  rightly  discarded.  They  may  be  worshiped  as 
fetishes  for  a  time  but  practise  based  upon  them 
can  not  stand  permanently  against  the  demands  of 
the  practical  mind:  Worn-out  philosophies  must  go 
when  they  obstruct  progress,  for  progress  demands 
a  constant  adaptation  to  the  things  of  to-day  and  the 
promise  of  to-morrow. 

No  field  offers  a  more  striking  opportunity  for  ob- 
1 


2  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

servations  of  this  character  than  the  subject  of  this 
chapter — "What  are  the  purposes  of  education?" 
Throughout  the  ages  this  question  has  agitated  the 
minds  of  schoolmen,  philosophers  and  statesmen. 
At  one  time  it  has  been  answered  and  acted  upon 
in  one  way,  at  another  in  a  different  way.  One 
country  and  one  civilization  have  adopted  one  ideal, 
another  a  wholly  different  ideal.  The  Hebrews 
sought  morality  and  religion  through  education; 
the  Athenians  aimed  at  ideal  culture;  the  Spartans 
sought  physical  power;  the  Romans,  law,  oratory 
and  military  prowess;  the  church  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  preparation  for  a  future  state;  while  modern 
nations  have  sought  a  variety  of  ends  combining 
many  of  the  ancient  ideals  with  modern  needs. 

One  thing  stands  out  in  bold  relief  in  the  history 
of  education,  namely,  that  thinkers  in  all  ages  have 
believed  in  the  efficacy  of  education  to  attain  certain 
ends.    It  has  always  meant  power  expressed  accord-    ' 
ing  to  the  prevailing  ideal. 

Another  characteristic  feature  of  educational 
philosophy,  developed  throughout  the  ages,  has  been 
its  idealism.  "To  train  men  to  the  fullest  expression 
of  their  powers,"  according  to  the  ideal  of  the  time 
was  set  up  as  the  end  of  education.  In  all  cases, 
however,  it  was  the  ideal  education  of  the  for- 
tunately circumstanced  which  philosophers  talked 
about  and  statesmen  promoted.  Education  was  for 
the  few  who  could  profit  by  the  particular  education 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION   3 

offered.  The  many  went  untaught  and  the  problem 
of  teaching  them  was  scarcely  considered  and  not  at 
all  acted  upon. 

This  philosophy  of  ideal  education  has  come  down 
to  us  from  the  past  generations  and  still  persists  as 
the  basis  of  our  educational  practise  and  dominates 
the  system  in  which  we  attempt  to  educate  "all  the 
children  of  all  the  people*"  In  other  words  an  in- 
herited scheme  of  education  designed  to  give  the 
broadest  culture  and  information  to  the  few  who 
have  no  time  limits  to  their  educational  opportu- 
nities is  applied  "willy-nilly"  to  the  great  mass  of 
children,  half  of  whom  leave  the  school  at  fourteen 
years  of  age. 

The  present  demand  is  that  we  refashion  our 
educational  philosophy  in  the  light  of  the  actual  con- 
ditions; that  we  throw  off  the  shackles  of  an 
outworn  past ;  that  we  restate  our  educational  prin- 
ciples; and  address  ourselves  to  the  task  of  deter- 
mining the  end  of  education  in  this  time  and  in  this 
country  where  certain  facilities  for  education  are 
universally  provided  and  attendance  at  school  com- 
pelled. We  must  find  modern  substitutes  for  an- 
cient ideals  and  we  must  make  practical  the  ideals 
we  set  up. 

One  of  the  keenest  of  our  present-day  educators 
has  declared  the  ideal  of  education  to  be:  "What 
the  best  and  wisest  of  parents  wants  for  his  own 
child,  that  must  the  community  want  for  all  its 


4  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

children.  Any  other  ideal  for  our  schools  is  un- 
lovely; acted  upon,  it  destroys  our  democracy/'1 

No  one  would  question  that  the  community  should 
offer  the  opportunity  for  the  fulfillment  of  this  ideal 
for  all  its  children.  This  country  has  offered  such 
opportunity  in  the  system  of  public  schools  which 
afford  the  chance  for  the  highest  development  to 
those  who  would  pursue  knowledge  to  the  utter- 
most. As  a  working  plan,  however,  the  system 
quite  generally  fails.  It  actually  works  out  to  the 
advantage  of  a  small  percentage  of  youth,  while  to 
the  great  majority — fully  ninety  per  cent. — it  is  lit- 
tle more  than  a  dream. 

In  recasting  our  education  to  meet  the  demands 
of  a  democracy  we  may  well  accept  the  ideal  set 
forth  by  Dewey  and  keep  open  the  way  from  the 
kindergarten  to  the  university.  But  we  can  not  be 
true  to  that  ideal  if  we  worship  it  and  fail  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  vast  majority  of  youth  who  are 
unable  to  stay  in  school  even  partially  to  attain  the 
ideal. 

With  the  ideal  in  mind  and  the  actual  conditions 
understood,  our  problem  is  to  reassert  the  estab- 
lished principles  of  education  in  terms  of  universal 
application.  Not  merely  what  we  desire  for  all  chil- 
dren but  what  we  can  actually  accomplish  by  educa- 
tion for  each,  should  guide  us.  We  must  make  our 
educational  principles  applicable  to  the  education  of 


1  Dewey.     The  School  and  Society,  p.  19. 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION   5 

the  great  mass  as  we  find  them  and  not  merely  to  the  *" 
education  of  selected  groups.     We  must  not  close 
our  minds  to  the  educational  needs  and  rights  of  the 
ninety  per  cent,  who  do  not  profit  by  the  system  of 
ideal  education  which  we  have  set  up. 

The  best  we  can  do  is  to  keep  the  door  of  educa- 
tional opportunity  wide  open  and  encourage  and  help 
all  to  enter,  and  also  strive  to  educate  all  of  the 
others  who  for  any  reason  have  not  been  able  to 
profit  by  the  instruction  ofTered. 

A  theory  of  perfection  will  not  do  if  we  expect 
practical  results.  We  are  not  a  nation  exclusively 
of  philosophers  and  our  children  are  not  all  philoso- 
phers in  embryo.  Variety  is  almost  as  great  as  num- 
bers. No  two  persons  are  alike  physically  and  the 
fact  holds  true  mentally.  What  will  train  one  to 
the  highest  good  will  fall  on  sterile  ground  with 
another.  No  educational  system  of  uniform  rigid 
application  will  meet  the  needs  of  a  democracy. 
Such  a  system  must  be  as  varied  as  the  infinite  dif- 
ferences of  humanity. 

An  examination  of  society  and  of  the  system  of 
education  at  once  establishes  the  conclusion  that 
whatever  philosophy  we  build  our  educational  sys- 
tem upon  it  should  be  based  upon  the  idea  of  giving 
to  each  person  the  kind  and  content  of  education  by 
which  he  can  profit.  Education  ought  to  be  suited 
to  the  capabilities  of  each  and  to  avoid  an  abstract 
ideal  by  which  the  few  only  may  profit. 


6  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

In  seeking  the  basis  of  such  a  philosophy,  the 
idea  of  education  as  an  adjustment  of  the  individual 
to  his  environment  has  been  evolved.  The  idea  is 
at  once  universal  in  its  application,  and  offers  the 
abstract  ideal  of  giving  to  each  the  opportunity  for 
the  fullest  development  of  which  he  is  capable. 

Education  as  an  adjustment  of  the  individual  to 
his  environment,  as  here  understood,  means  not 
merely  adjustment  to  the  material  things  around 
him,  but  also  adjustment  to  the  larger  life  which  he 
must  lead  as  an  individual,  a  member  or  parent  of  a 
family,  a  member  of  society  and  a  citizen  of  the 
state.  Education  should  bring  each  individual  intoV 
harmonious  relations  with  all  the  activities  which  go 
to  make  up  his  ordinary  life.  As  expressed  by  Her- 
bert Spencer2  the  ultimate  test  is : 

"How  to  live? — Not  how  to  live  in  the  mere 
material  sense  only,  but  in  the  widest  sense.  The 
general  problem  which  comprehends  every  special 
problem  is — the  right  ruling  of  conduct  in  all  direc- 
tions under  all  circumstances.  In  what  way  to  treat 
the  body;  in  what  way  to  treat  the  mind;  in  what 
way  to  manage  our  affairs;  in  what  way  to  bring 
up  a  family;  in  what  way  to  behave  as  a  citizen; 
in  what  way  to  utilize  all  those  sources  of  happiness 
which  nature  supplies — how  to  use  all  our  facilities 
to  the  greatest  advantage  of  ourselves  and  others — 
how  to  live  completely?  And  this  being  the  great 
thing  needful  for  us  to  learn,  is,  by  consequence,  the 

3  What  Knowledge  Is  of  Most  Worth 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION  7 

great  thing  which  education  has  to  teach.  To  pre- 
pare us  for  complete  living  is  the  function  which 
education  has  to  discharge;  and  the  only  rational 
mode  of  judging  of  any  educational  course  is,  to 
judge  in  what  degree  it  discharges  such  function. " 

Coming  to  the  classification  of  those  activities 
which  essentially  make  up  life,  Spencer  arranges 
them  as  follows:  "1.  Those  activities  which  di- 
rectly minister  to  self-preservation.  2.  Those  ac- 
tivities which,  by  securing  the  necessaries  of  life, 
indirectly  minister  to  self-preservation.  3.  Those 
activities  which  have  for  their  end  the  rearing  and 
discipline  of  offspring.  4.  Those  activities  which 
are  involved  in  the  maintenance  of  proper  social 
and  political  relations.  5.  Those  miscellaneous  ac- 
tivities which  make  up  the  leisure  part  of  life,  de- 
voted to  the  gratification  of  the  tastes  and  feelings." 

In  a  primitive  state  of  society  most  of  this  educa- 
tion could  be  obtained  from  institutions  other  than 
the  school.  Self-preservation  from  the  ordinary 
dangers,  being  largely  instinctive,  there  was  little 
that  outside  direction  could  do  in  this  part  of  educa- 
tion except  to  protect  the  child  from  precipitate  dan- 
gers to  which  he  was  not  accustomed.  In  such  a 
society  self-support  was  learned  from  actual  experi- 
ence. The  son  followed  his  father's  footsteps  and 
learned  the  simple  things  of  the  trade  or  of  the  field 
which  were  needed  for  self-support.  Production 
for  simple  needs  required  no  elaborate1  schooling. 


8  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Likewise  in  the  home  the  child  learned  the  methods 
of  the  household  and  the  care  of  children. 

In  such  a  primitive  society,  as  O'Shea  points  out,3 
"where  the  individual's  adaptations  to  the  world  is 
not,  relatively  speaking,  very  complex,  and  conse- 
quently when  needs  are  comparatively  few  each  per- 
son can  look  after  himself  quite  completely.  The 
mode  of  settling  difficulties  between  man  and  man 
does  not  call  for  much  beyond  muscular  force  and  so 
the  individual  has  no  need  for  learning  a  vast  body 
of  intricate  laws  governing  social  relations.  There 
is  no  stock  of  knowledge  or  experience  relating  to 
the  nature  and  method  of  treating  human  ailments 
which  makes  the  services  of  a  specialist  in  medicine 
necessary.  So  the  individual  can  get  what  food  he 
needs,  can  make  his  own  clothing,  can  build  his  own 
hut,  and  so  on." 

The  social  order  in  this  country  is  no  longer 
primitive.  It  grows  infinitely  complex.  Each  dec- 
ade brings  with  it  new  problems  and  new  duties. 
Corresponding  responsibilities  are  placed  upon  so- 
ciety if  the  ideal  of  education  is  to  be  realized  and 
the  mass  of  individuals  adjusted  to  their  environ- 
ment. Take  for  example,  the  new  things  required 
to  be  taught  in  the  simplest  phase  of  education  men- 
tioned above — that  for  self-preservation.  Man  in 
the  aggregate  is  no  longer  a  free  agent.  He  can 
not  live  unto  himself  alone.    The  majority  of  men 


Education  as  Adjustment,  p.  119* 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION   9 

must  work  in  connection  with  other  men,  in  masses 
— in  the  factories,  mills  and  workshops,  on  high- 
ways, railroads,  streets  and  on  the  farm.  They  must 
work  with  complicated  machinery — they  are  in  fact 
a  part  of  a  great  machine.  Dangers  beset  them  on  all 
sides.  They  are  subjected  to  the  risk  of  industrial 
accidents  and  to  the  infections  of  occupational  dis- 
eases. The  very  food  that  sustains  them  is  no 
longer  simple  diet,  but  the  product  of  many  lands 
and  of  many  processes  of  manufacture.  They  must 
know  many  more  facts  of  physiology  and  dietetics 
than  their  forefathers  knew  in  order  to  protect  their 
lives  and  sustain  them  in  vigor.  Knowledge  for 
self-preservation  is  extensive  and  the  individual  can 
not  be  left  to  learn  by  body-breaking  experience,  the^ 
things  which  organized  instruction  can  give. 

How  to  protect  life  in  all  of  the  varied  and  com- 
plicated world's  work ;  how  to  prevent  the  calamities 
of  occupational  accidents  and  diseases,  how  to  make 
men  keener  in  self -protection  and  stronger  for  the 
struggle  of  life,  all  these  throw  a  great  and  increas- 
ing burden  upon  the  agencies  of  education.  Nor 
does  this  consist  merely  in  learning  a  few  facts  or 
being  trained  in  the  use  of  safety  devices.  It  is  com- 
prehensive of  the  whole  civic  and  social  life  and 
broadly  educational  in  its  content  and  results. 
Proper  education  for  self-preservation  is  at  once  V 
universal,  scientific  and  practical. 

To  adjust  the  individual  to  his  environment  in  the 


10  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

second  greatjmrposejpXedii cation,  namely,  to  earn  a 
living,  means  an  entirely  different  regimen  of  studies 
than  in  the  simpler  life  of  the  past. 

The  process  of  conquering  the  earth  and  its  po- 
tential powers  has  evolved  a  new  order  and  con- 
tinued evolution  is  bringing  changes  whose  extent 
we  can  only  dimly  foresee.  The  people  of  the  world 
earn  their  livings  to-day  in  hundreds  of  ways  un- 
known a  generation  ago.  The  people  of  the  next 
generation  will  add  other  hundreds  of  occupations. 
In  these  circumstances  of  growth  and  change  we 
readily  see  the  task  which  education  must  assume  if 
its  ends  are  to  be  universally  obtained  and  progress- 
ively maintained.  In  former  days  when  the  son  fol- 
lowed the  father  to  his  shop  or  into  the  fields  and 
the  girl  was  the  mother's  apprentice  and  the  young 
learned  the  mystery  and  art  of  the  trade  or  other 
vocation  from  their  elders  by  practise  and  precept, 
the  need  for  other  educational  agencies  to  fit  for 
earning  a  living  was  not  apparent.  At  least  it  was 
not  a  pressing  necessity.  The  system  may  not  have 
promoted  progress  as  it  should,  but  it  gave  at  least 
a  passable  preparation  for  work. 

New  economic  conditions  have  changed  all  of  this. 
Instead  of  the  simple  shop  where  the  father  or  the 
master  carried  on  his  simple  trade  and  taught  the 
mystery  and  art  to  his  son  or  to  his  apprentice,  there 
is  the  great  factory,  specialized  processes,  division  of 
labor,  machine  production,  all  resulting  in  the  utter 


THE    PURPOSES    OF    EDUCATION    11 

demoralization  of  the  system  of  education  which 
formerly  prepared  the  young  for  their  life-work. 
The  achievements  of  the  new  industrial  day  are  mar- 
velous, but  they  are  marred  by  the  failure  of  indus- 
trialists and  the  public  to  see  that  the  right  kind  of 
educational  advance  goes  hand  in  hand  with  the  new* 
industry,  supplying  the  needs  of  the  workers  in  the 
new  forms  of  industry  with  the  education  which  the 
former  apprenticeship  system  gave  in  the  old  and 
without  which,  men  become  slaves  to  the  machines 
on  which  they  work.  Educational  agencies  absorbed 
with  the  fetishes  of  a  worn-out  philosophy  of  edu- 
cation left  industry  and  the  workers  severely  alone, 
and  industry  took  advantage  of  its  freedom  by  ex- 
ploiting the  men  and  women  and  the  boys  and  girls, 
by  working  them  for  profit  with  no  thought  of  an 
obligation  to  educate  them  for  permanent  and  in- 
creasing efficiency. 

Instead  of  the  nice  adjustment  which  should  al- 
ways exist  between  education  and  work,  so  that  the 
vision  of  the  worker  will  be  constantly  enlarged  and 
so  that  men  may  become  .broadly  efficient  and 
economically  independent,  we  have  been  left  by  the 
neglect  of  the  past  in  the  sad  state  where  a  great 
majority  of  our  people  receive  no  adequate  prepara- 
tion for  earning  a  living  either  through  educational 
agencies  or  in  industry  itself. 

No  matter  what  field  of  human  activity  we  con- 
sider, the  same  facts  strike  us  forcibly — that  the 


12  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

altered  economic  conditions  have  made  necessary  aij 
corresponding  alteration  of  education  if  the  end  of 
education  as  adjustment  shall  be  realized.  The  farm 
furnishes  typical  examples.  The  farmer  of  a  few 
years  ago  needed  little  education  other  than  that 
learned  by  experience  as  a  farm  laborer  or  as  a  farm 
helper  in  the  farm  family  regime.  Small  produc- 
tion largely  for  home  consumption ;  few  farm  tools 
and  simple  equipment;  rich  soils  and  plenty  of  new 
lands  and  few  problems  of  transportation  or  the  sale 
of  products,  needed  little  education  on  the  part  of 
the  farmer  other  than  that  gained  from  experience, 
tutelage  by  parents  and  common  observation.  To- 
day the  vocation  of  farming,  if  successful,  requires 
big,  practical,  scientific,  broadly-educated  business 
men.  In  no  calling  is  so  much  and  such  diversified 
knowledge  required.  Preparation  for  this  vocation 
requires  a  system  of  education  closely  adjusted  to 
the  needs  of  the  industry  in  each  community  and 
fitted  to  the  capacities  of  men.  Science  especially, 
including  chemistry,  biology  and  physics,  plays  a 
large  part.  So  does  mathematics  with  particular 
reference  to  the  formulas  for  feed,  seed,  fertilizer 
and  scores  of  other  commodities  where  mathemat- 
ical adjustment  of  parts  is  essential.  Cost  account- 
ing is  a  neglected  but  necessary  guide  to  a  farmer's 
work,  while  to  get  the  part  of  the  product  which 
reasonably  belongs  to  him  requires  that  he  have 
knowledge  of  the  economics  of  production,  trans- 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION  13 

portation  and  marketing.  Education  to  prepare 
adequately  for  earning  a  living  on  the  farm  now 
and  in  the  still  more  intense  future,  must  keep  the 
balance  nicely  adjusted  between  the  actual  work 
and  the  guiding  principles  of  the  knowledge  suited 
to  the  vocation.  Education  as  adjustment  to  en- 
vironment should  be  largely  reconstructed  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  farmer. 

Likewise  in  the  home  is  found  the  same  expan- 
sion of  duties.  There  are  increased  difficulties  and 
responsibilities  of  parenthood;  an  economic  neces- 
sity for  conservation  to  meet  the  high  cost  of  liv- 
ing; and  the  requirements  for  human  efficiency  of 
better  food  values;  to  say  nothing  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  artistic  and  the  beautiful  in  home  life. 
Some  can  get  a  reasonably  good  education  and 
training  at  home,  but  in  these  days  most  people  must 
be  trained  for  the  home  by  agencies  outside  the 
home. 

In  the  distributive  process — the  commercial  ac- 
tivities— the  same  conclusions  hold  with  even  greater 
force.  On  the  side  of  distribution  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted we  are  fundamentally  weak.  The  solution 
of  the  problem  of  getting  the  goods  to  the  consumer 
with  the  greatest  economy  has  hardly  yet  been 
touched.  Business  has  been  done  largely  by  "rule 
of  thumb."  It  has  been  imitative  and  seldom  orig- 
inal. Great  numbers  of  business  men  have  been 
merely  soldiers  of  fortune  seeking  their  chance.   By 


14  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

excessive  profits  in  specialties  or  in  special  cir- 
cumstances, many  have  succeeded.  Those  who  have 
grasped  the  commercial  problems  and  have  built 
solidly  upon  knowledge — in  other  words  those  who 
have  been  adjusted  to  their  jobs — are  few.  No  bet- 
ter proof  could  be  furnished — if  proof  were  neces- 
sary— than  the  demoralization  of  American  com- 
merce in  the  months  following  the  outbreak  of  the 
European  war.  Our  commercial  adventurers  found 
themselves  confused  and  powerless.  It  remained 
for  the  few  who  really  had  grasped  the  fundamentals 
of  business,  who  had  the  requisite  knowledge  and 
the  vision  which  goes  with  it,  to  bring  order  out  of 
the  chaos. 

All  through  the  ranks  of  business  runs  the  fatal 
weakness  of  unpreparedness  to  meet  new  conditions. 
The  managers  have  been  trained  by  rule  of  thumb, 
the  subordinates  have  been  educated  in  so-called 
"business  colleges"  where  the  machine  grinds  out 
finished  products  in  three  months  to  a  year.  No  ra- 
tional study  of  business  needs  or  of  workers  has 
ever  been  made  and  hence  the  education  of  business 
men  and  their  subordinates  has  failed  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  workers  in  the  commercial  life  of  the 
present  or  to  build  up  a  solid  foundation  for  busi- 
ness. 

Not  to  multiply  examples  on  this  head  but  to  show  ^ 
the  universal  need  of  an  education  for  more  efficient 
adjustment  in  all  phases  of  life,  mention  must  be 


THE  PURPOSES  OF  EDUCATION  15 

made  of  the  new  demands  upon  the  more  skilled 
trades,  vocations  and  professions.  The  lawyer 
needs  a  far  wider  range  of  matters  than  his  prede- 
cessor if  he  is  to  serve  humanity  or  to  win  and  hold 
clients;  a  physician  has  infinitely  more  to  learn;  a 
minister  of  the  gospel  can  not  rely  upon  dogmatic 
sermons  if  he  is  to  lead  his  fellow  men;  broader  and 
more  practical  education  to  adjust  them  to  their 
whole  job  should  be  had  by  the  engineer,  teacher, 
pharmacist,  architect  and  all  the  other  professional 
vocations,  and  a  clear  grasp  of  social  and  industrial 
facts  and  conditions  must  be  given  to  all  men,  what- 
ever their  calling,  if  men  are  to  be  adjusted  fully 
to  the  environment  of  the  present  day  and  to  be 
capable  of  playing  their  full  part  in  society. 

But  every  person  is  a  consumer  without  regard  to 
his  status  in  the  vocations  as  a  producer.  Men  must 
eat,  be  clothed,  and  housed  and  have  the  privilege 
of  enjoying  all  that  they  are  capable  of  in  the  leisure 
of  life.  They  have  vocations  and  work  at  them  to 
earn  enough  to  live.  The  object  of  educating  to 
produce  more  efficiently  is  clearly  to  provide  more 
to  consume,  whether  of  food,  clothing  or  enjoy- 
ments. Since  production  and  consumption  are  so 
closely  related,  education  for  each  serves  the  pur- 
poses of  the  other.  If  men  are  taught  to  consume 
food  which  conserves  the  strength  and  saves  the 
pocketbook,  a  larger  sum  is  left  for  clothing,  shel- 
ter and  enjoyments.     If  clothing  and  shelter  are 


16  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

wisely  and  expertly  chosen  and  appropriated,  the 
economy  makes  possible  opportunities  for  a  fuller 
life.  Wise  use  is  certainly  as  important  as  efficient 
production. 

Education  as  adjustment  has  here  its  most  uni- 
versal need  and  clearest  possibilities  of  application. 
Absolute  or  approximate  universal  education  for 
production  may  be  impossible  because  of  the  infinite 
variations  of  occupations,  but  education  for  con- 
sumption is  simple,  homogeneous  and  easily  or- 
ganized. 

Thus,  in  the  all  important  activities  of  life  con- 
nected with  making  a  living  and  living,  as  in  that 
of  direct  self-preservation,  an  intenser  education  to 
bring  the  individual  into  harmony  with  his  environ- 
ment, and  to  give  him  possession  of  the  tools  of 
economic  independence,  is  a  present  and  future 
necessity  for  individual  and  social  welfare. 

When  the  individual  has  been  trained  efficiently 
in  self-preservation  and  to  earn  a  living,  he  lias  the 
potential  capacity  for  good  citizenship.  The  effi- 
cient man  is  the  efficient  citizen.  Men  need  to  be  in 
a  position  to  serve  themselves  before  they  can  serve 
the  state.  The  citizen  to-day  has  upon  him  a  vast 
and  increasing  burden.  The  complexities  of  society 
must  be  understood  somewhat,  because  he  must 
guide  his  actions  in  the  midst  of  these  complexities. 
Moreover,  democracy  has  put  the  responsibility 
upon  every  citizen  not  only  to  determine  his  own 


THE    PURPOSES    OF    EDUCATION    17 

course  but  also  to  help  in  determining  society's 
course. 

To  see  that  every  man  in  every  walk  of  life  is  a 
true  civic  unit  having  power  as  an  individual,  and 
insight  as  a  citizen,  is  one  of  the  foremost  duties  of 
our  educational  system.  Not  merely  the  education 
of  the  few  for  leadership  in  civic  affairs,  but  the  en- 
largement of  the  civic  knowledge  of  each  unit  will 
solve  the  problems  of  modern  life.  Each  individual 
in  a  democracy  is  entitled  to  receive  an  education 
which  puts  him  in  full  command  of  himself  as  a 
worker  and  a  citizen. 

Likewise,  the  education  which  Spencer  advocated 
to  enable  the  individual  to  enjoy  the  leisure  time  of 
life  must  be  broadly  aimed  to  touch  all  persons  with 
its  beneficent  influence.  Not  merely  that  the  few 
may  learn  to  enjoy  beauty  in  a  picture,  a  statue,  or 
a  poem,  but  that  all  may  find  wholesome  pleasures 
in  their  ordinary  spheres,  is  the  ideal  of  education 
for  adjustment. 

All  phases  of  life  have  become  more  complex  and 
education  must  lay  new  foundations  and  adopt  new 
methods  to  accomplish  its  ends.  The  apprenticeship 
system  has  broken  down  in  industry ;  home  training 
no  longer  suffices  for  the  majority  who  are  to  be 
home-makers  in  this  day;  workers  can  no  longer 
successfully  engage  in  agriculture  or  industry  if 
armed  only  with  crude  uneducated  experience;  the 
lawyer,  doctor,  teacher  and  preacher,  in   fact  all 


18  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

artisans,  workers  or  professional  people  can  not 
fully  realize  the  ideal  unless  more  broadly  educated 
than  by  the  earlier  but  now  obsolete  methods  of  ap- 
prenticeship, office  boy,  helper  or  assistant.  Out- 
side agencies  must  engage  in  placing  broad  founda- 
tions of  knowledge  under  the  experience  gained  in 
shop  or  home,  farm  or  profession. 

This  sort  of  education  must  be  essentially  pro- 
gressive. It  must  keep  abreast  of  the  times  and 
always  with  an  eye  to  future  development.  A  sys- 
tem of  educational  adjustment  established  to-day 
and  based  upon  present  economic  conditions  would 
be  out  of  date  in  some  particulars  within  a  brief 
space  of  time  and  almost  wholly  obsolete  w^a  few 
generations. 

An  example  of  what  happens  when  the  schools 
are  not  progressively  adjusted,  is  drawn  by  Dewey 
from  the  problems  in  compound  partnership  given 
in  arithmetic  up  to  a  short  time  ago.  The  com- 
pound partnership  originated  as  far  back  as  the 
sixteenth  century  as  a  system  of  doing  business  be- 
fore the  days  of  the  joint  stock  company.  "Nat- 
urally then  compound  partnership  was  taught  in  the 
schools.  The  joint  stock  company  was  invented, 
compound  partnership  disappeared  but  the  problems 
relating  to  it  stayed  in  the  arithmetic  for  two  hun- 
dred years.  They  were  kept  after  they  had  ceased 
to  have  practical  utility  for  the  sake  of  mental  dis- 
cipline— they  were  'such  hard  problems  you  know/ 


THE    PURPOSES    OF    EDUCATION    19 

A  great  deal  of  what  is  now  in  the  arithmetic  under 
the  head  of  percentage  is  of  the  same  nature.  Chil- 
dren of  twelve  and  thirteen  years  of  age  go  through 
gain  and  loss  calculations  and  various  forms  of  bank 
discounts  so  complicated  that  bankers  long  ago  dis- 
pensed with  them.  And  when  it  is  pointed  out  that 
business  is  not  done  that  way  we  hear  again  of 
'mental  discipline/  And  yet  there  are  plenty  of  real 
connections  between  the  experience  of  children  and 
business  conditions  which  need  to  be  utilized  and 
illuminated."4 

When  we  consider  the  adjustment  of  the  individ- 
ual to  his  environment  we  often  think  that  the  en- 
vironment is  static  and  the  adjusting  must  be  en- 
tirely on  the  part  of  the  individual.  This  is  not 
correct,  for  we  know  that  man  in  his  reactions  upon 
his  environment  changes  that  environment  and  the 
concentrated  movements  of  men  in  the  mass  change 
society  into  a  dynamic  state.  The  instrument  which  • 
adjusts  one  dynamic  body  to  another  and  keeps  them 
adjusted  must  itself  be  dynamic.  Education  being 
that  means  of  adjustment  between  man  and  his  en- 
vironment, must  continually  be  adjusting  its  content 
and  methods  to  the  changing  conditions  on  which 
it  works.  Education  must  be  progressive,  therefore,  * 
if  it  is  to  be  the  adjusting  force  in  society.  Teach- 
ers, text-books,  paraphernalia,  materials  and  meth- 


4  School  and  Society,  pp.  91,  92. 


20  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

ods  must  be  suited  to  the  time  and  place,  to  the  in- 
dividual, and  the  state  of  society.  If  the  school  be 
in  Porto  Rico,  it  should  seek  to  adjust  the  pupils  to 
the  life  of  Porto  Rico  and  not  to  that  of  Boston. 
If  the  school  be  in  a  twentieth-century  environment, 
it  should  draw  its  content  from  the  twentieth  and 
not  from  the  sixteenth  century. 

In  terms  then  of  modern  application  the  end  of 
education  is  to  train  the  individual  in  self-preserva- 
tion in  the  multitude  of  dangers  which  beset  his 
path ;  to  train  him  to_earn  a  living  and  to  live  under 
modern  conditions  of  production  and  distribution; 
to  be  an  efficient  consumer;  to  conserve  the  home 
and  care  for  children;  to  perform  essential  duties 
as  a  citizen ;  and  to  enable  each  to  get  the  fullest  en- 
joyment from  the  work  which  he  does  as  a  worker, 
parent  or  citizen  and  to  utilize  the  leisure  time  of 
life  wisely  and  happily. 

"The  world  in  which  most  of  us  live,''  says  John 
Dewey,  "is  a  world  in  which  everyone  has  a  call- 
ing, an  occupation,  something  to  do.  Some  are 
managers  and  others  are  subordinates.  But  the 
great  thing  for  one  as  for  the  other  is  that  each 
shall  have  had  the  education  which  enables  him  to 
see  within  his  daily  work  all  there  is  in  it  of  large 
and  human  significance."5 

6  School  and  Society,  p.  38. 


CHAPTER  II 


PASSING  EDUCATION  AROUND 


)emocracy's  demand  for  equality  of  educational  opportunity 
— Adjustment  to  environment  must  be  universal — Individual 
and  environment  are  variable — Education  to  extend  through- 
out life — Putting  knowledge  to  work — Training  people  at 
work — Capacity  of  all  for  training — Outline  of  a  universal 
scheme^ —  Vocational  education  essential  —  Influences  which 
have  thwarted  universal  education — Examples  to  follow — 
Some  critics  answered. 


Nothing  short  of  universal  education  can  be  the 
ultimate  goal  of  democracy.  Equality  of  opportu- 
nity is  the  foundation  of  all  society  based  on  demo- 
cratic principles.  We  agree  that  education  is  a  fun- 
damental requirement  for  equality,  and  if  equality 
in  educational  opportunity  is  to  be  attained,  all  sorts 
of  education  must  be  provided  to  meet  the  needs  of 
all  sorts  of  people.  A  democracy  must  seek  to 
realize,  for  all  education,  the  ideal  of  Ezra  Cornell 
for  collegiate  work  expressed  in  the  statement  so 
often  quoted :  "I  would  found  a  university  where 
any  person  can  find  instruction  in  any  study."  "It 
is  evident,"  said  Lester  F.  Ward,  "that  any  system 
of  education  which  falls  short,  even  in  the  slightest 
particular,  of  absolute  universality  can  not  proceed 

21 


22  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

from  any  true  conception  of  what  education  is  for, 
or  what  it  is  capable  of  accomplishing." 

The  truth  of  these  observations  will  go  unchal- 
lenged if  we  agree  upon  the  proposition  set  forth 
in  the  first  chapter  that  true  education  consists  in 
the  adjustment  of  the  individual  to  his  environment. 
This  means  the  adjustment  of  the  great  mass  of 
people  and  not  merely  the  fortunate  few.  It  means 
that  the  system  should  not  be  based  upon  the  capa- 
bilities and  possibilities  of  the  "exceptionally 
talented,  the  influential,  the  fortunately  circum- 
stanced, the  heirs  of  plenty  and  of  leisure,"  but 
should  be  based  primarily  upon  average  normal 
human  beings.  They  constitute  the  great  mass 
which  is  yet  largely  untouched  by  real  education. 

Education  for  adjustment  must,  take  account  of 
two  variables,  the  individual  and  the  environment. 
No  two  people  are  exactly  alike  in  physical  form  or 
adaptability.  The  variations  in  the  race  are  infinite. 
No  two  people  are  alike  in  mentality.  Again  the 
variations  in  the  race  are  infinite.  It  follows  that 
education  which  takes  account  of  mental  power  and 
physical  adaptability  must  be  extremely  varied  if  the 
real  needs  of  all  the  people  are  to  be  met.  Likewise 
the  variations  in  environment  are  no  less  infinite  and 
changes  take  place  with  a  rapidity  that  is  disturbing 
to  any  rigid  scheme.  Education  must  therefore,  in 
practical  fashion,  group  the  individuals  for  teaching 
purposes  and  lay  hold  of  the  more  permanent  prac- 


PASSING   EDUCATION    AROUND      23 

tises  and  principles  in  the  environing  world  of  each 
group  and  bring  the  two  into  as  nearly  harmonious 
relations  as  the  variations  of  both  will  permit. 

Plans  for  universal  education  will  take  account  of 
the  fact  also  that  education  is  not  confined  to  the 
few  years  in  school,  but_jjxtends_ _ throughout _life. 
Such  plans  will  recognize  that  "commencement  day" 
is  not  the  end — as  most  young  folks  think — but  the 
beginning  of  education  and  there  will  be  worked 
out  such  a  coordination  of  the  school  work  with 
the  life  of  the  youth,  that  education  will  naturally 
slip  over  from  his  school  days  into  his  every-day  life 
when  he  leaves  the  school.  Graduation  will  mean 
that  the  gap  between  school  and  work  has  been 
bridged  and  that  the  youth  has  joined  his  mental 
assets,  accumulated  through  his  school  studies,  with 
his  practical  work  in  profession,  trade,  or  business. 

There  has  been  too  wide  a  separation  between 
education  and  practise.  Men  have  gone  on  accumu- 
lating knowledge ;  scientists  and  thinkers  have  been 
producing  new  knowledge;  and  yet  the  workers  on 
the  other  side  have  done  their  work  without  the  ap- 
plication of  this  knowledge  which  would  have  meant 
so  much  to  them.  Knowledge  and  work  have  each 
been  kept  in  sealed  packages  to  the  hurt  of  the  latter 
and  the  uselessness  of  the  former.  "So  learn  that 
you  may  do,  and  so  do  that  you  may  learn/ '  should 
be  the  ideal  of  universal  education  in  the  process 
of  adjusting  man  to  his  environment.     Universal 


.mm 


24  LEANING    TO    EARN 

education  recognizes  that  education  is  as  much  for 
men  who  are  doing  things  as  for  those  who  are 
thinking  about  things. 

Enough  knowledge  is  already  stored  up  to  revolu- 
tionize the  practical  world  if  it  could  only  be  brought 
into  action.  Enough  scientific  knowledge  of  agri- 
culture is  in  printed  form  to  make  two  blades  of 
grass  grow  where  one  grows  now  if  it  were  effect- 
ively put  to  work;  enough  of  industrial  science  has 
been  accumulated  to  bring  a  new  era  of  efficiency 
if  a  channel  could  be  opened  to  conduct  it  to  the 
right  workers  in  the  office  and  shop ;  enough  science 
and  art  stand  ready  to  improve  the  millions  of 
homes  in  the  land  if  the  home-makers  were  given 
the  opportunity  to  get,  and  were  taught  to  practise, 
that  part  which  is  useful  to  them;  and  enough  prin- 
ciples and  facts  of  business  are  available  for  the 
business  man  to  give  business  a  broader,  more  per- 
manent and  more  efficient  character  if  they  can  only 
be  wrought  in  the  right  proportions,  into  the  minds 
and  actions  of  business  men. 

The  task  of  doing  these  things  rests  upon  the  edu- 
cational system.  The  public  is  deeply  concerned 
that  all  of  these  ends  be  accomplished  and  the  only 
public  instrument  available  is  the  educational  system 
already  set  up  for  that  very  purpose,  but  which  has 
been  perverted  from  this  end  by  lack  of  insight, 
true  guidance  and  constant  adaptation.  The  lead- 
ers of  education  on  the  one  hand  and  of  industry, 


I^loi 


PASSING   EDUCATIOI^lROUND     25 

business,  home  and  farm  on  the  other,  have  been 
working  independently,  resulting  in  a  system  of 
education  unarticulated  with  environment  and  an 
environment  which  fails  to  get  the  forming  and 
transforming  knowledge  of  the  school. 

It  can  not  be  too  often  repeated  that  education 
of  the  sort  here  outlined  must  be  progressive;  con- 
stantly adapting  itself  to  new  conditions;  taking  ad- 
vantage of  new  knowledge;  and  bringing  about  a 
responsive  interaction  between  knowledge  and  the 
vocational  work  of  the  persons  within  its  influence. 

The  intent  of  education  rightly  understood  and 
applied,  is  not  merely  to  instruct  the  youth,  to  give 
them  vocational  help,  and  to  form  their  character. 
It  is  not  merely  to  make  lawyers,  doctors,  bankers, 
carpenters,  machinists,  engineers,  farmers  or  home- 
makers.  It  should  do  those  things  in  thorough  fash- 
ion, but  it  should  be  no  less  solicitous  of  the  equally 
large  and  significant  task  of  educating  men  and 
women  already  engaged  in  vocational  work  to  be 
more  efficient  as  workers,  home-makers  and  citi- 
zens and  more  broadly  sympathetic  with  life.  To 
take  an  apprentice  in  any  line  and  supply  by  educa- 
tion the  deficiencies  of  his  practical  training  and 
make  him  an  all-around  man  of  trade  or  profession; 
to  make  a  tradesman  a  better  skilled  and  more  effi- 
cient worker ;  to  educate  a  bank  clerk  to  be  a  banker ; 
a  salesman  to  be  a  buyer,  a  department  head  or  man- 
ager; a  farmer  to  utilize  the  expert  knowledge  of 


LE^ 


26  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

his  business,  or  the  home  manager  to  conserve  the 
home  and  its  resources;  to  put  within  reach  of  every 
one  the  means  of  bettering  himself  if  he  is  ambitious 
and  able  to  profit  by  the  instruction  given,  is  a  pro- 
gram to  fire  the  imagination  of  any  person  who  be- 
lieves in  the  power  of  education  to  promote  for  the 
individual  a  better  and  fuller  life,  and  for  the  nation 
a  sounder  and  more  permanent  efficiency. 

The  argument  for  universal  education  is  predi- 
cated upon  the  fact  that  the  mass  of  people  are 
capable  of  utilizing  properly  selected  data  of  educa- 
tion which  is  presented  in  the  right  way.  Far- 
seeing  German  educators  and  statesmen  have 
realized  this  fact  and  have  acted  upon  it  to  the  ex- 
tent of  planning  a  system  of  education  which  rec- 
ognizes the  possibilities  of  utilizing  education  in  all 
walks  of  life.  They  recognize  the  differences  in 
capacity  of  people  and  they  likewise  recognize  the 
differences  in  information  possessed  by  each.  Lester 
F.  Ward  has  put  the  case  for  the  average  man  in 
these  words :  "The  large  fund  of  good  sense  which 
is  always  found  among  the  lower  uneducated  classes 
is  an  obtrusive  fact  to  every  observing  mind.  The 
ability  with  which  ignorant  people  employ  their 
small  fund  of  knowledge  has  surprised  many 
learned  men.  While  there  may  doubtless  be  found 
all  grades  of  intellect  from  the  highest  philosopher 
to  the  lowest  idiot,  the  number  who  fall  below  a  cer- 
tain average  standard  is  insignificant,  and  so,  too,  is 


PASSING   EDUCATION    AROUND      27 

the  number  who  rise  above  it.  The  great  bulk  of 
humanity  are  fully  witted,  and  amply  capable  of 
taking  care  of  themselves  if  afforded  an  opportu- 
nity." 

While  recognizing  the  capacity  of  the  bulk  of  hu- 
manity for  training,  he  also  recognized  the  possi- 
bilities of  applying  education  to  the  widest  range  of 
activities.  To  quote  him,  "All  the  activities  of  life 
are  controlled  by  laws,  all  successful  enterprises  are 
prosecuted  according  to  certain  distinct  and  unvary- 
ing principles.  These  are  empirically,  though  as  a 
rule  not  scientifically,  known.  To  co-ordinate  them, 
though  perhaps  a  laborious,  is  by  no  means  a  diffi- 
cult task.  To  make  them  the  subject  of  systematic 
instruction  is  not  only  possible  and  practicable  but 
in  the  highest  degree  desirable — the  most  general 
knowledge  attainable  would  have  a  direct  and  im- 
portant bearing  upon  the  most  special  vocations  of 
life,  so  that  without  descending  to  technical  instruc- 
tion, the  greater  part  of  all  the  most  necessary  and 
important  practical  knowledge  of  human  life  might 
find  place  in  a  universal  curriculum." 

There  are  several  directions  in  which  the  educa- 
tional system  must  expand  if  universal  education 
is  to  be  approximated. 

First,  there  should  be  a  broader  and  richer  cur- 
riculum in  the  elementary  schools  so  as  to  appeal 
to  a  wider  range  of  tastes  and  capabilities  and  to 
give  to  each  student  more  of  the  elements  of  the 


28  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

things  which  come  within  the  range  of  his  ordinary 
experience. 

Second,  education  should  not  stop  at  the  school 
door.  Everything  inside  should  coordinate  with  the 
environment  of  the  pupils.  The  school  and  the  en- 
vironment ought  to  act  and  react  upon  each  other. 
And  this  should  continue  after  the  pupil  has  left  the 
school  and  gone  to  work.  Until  the  youth  is  at  least 
eighteen  years  of  age,  whether  he  is  at  work  or  not, 
there  should  be  sustained  a  direct  relation  with  the 
school. 

Third,  many-sided  opportunities  for  vocational 
education  must  be  given  when  the  youth  reaches 
that  age  when  individualism  asserts  itself  and  educa- 
tion in  the  mass  begins  to  fail. 

Fourth,  the  occupations  into  which  youth  enter 
should  be  studied  and  the  educational  possibilities 
utilized,  for  it  must  be  recognized  that  the  principal 
education  which  a  worker  gets  is  through  the  work 
he  is  doing.  So  the  school  must  point  out  what  there 
is  in  each  person's  work  of  educational  significance 
and  then  use  it  to  interest  the  workers  in  the  possi- 
bilities of  continued  education,  y**" 

Fifth,  education  being  a  continuing  process,  sci- 
entific care  should  be  taken  to  encourage  the  utiliza- 
tion of  every  means  of  promoting  study  correlated 
with  daily  experiences  in  trade,  shop,  profession, 
home,  farm,  or  in  the  civic  life  of  the  community. 
By  evening  courses,  correspondence  courses,  public 


PASSING   EDUCATION    AROUND      29 

libraries  and  reading  rooms,  the  chance  should  be 
afforded  to  every  one  to  continue  his  education  all 
through  life. 

Under  an  ideal  system  of  universal  education,  the 
youth  will  receive  an  education  in  the  elementary 
school  which  will  give  him  the  tools  of  knowledge 
and  some  power  to  appreciate  the  best  in  the  intellec- 
tual and  civic  life;  he  will  receive  a  broad  knowl- 
edge of  social  and  industrial  affairs  and  thereby  a 
better  insight  into  the  way  in  which  men  live  and 
labor,  and  thereby  of  the  forces  which  move  the 
world.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  the  schools  will  offer 
him  many-sided  opportunities  for  training  in  lines 
suited  to  his  tastes  and  capacities.  He  may  take 
further  general  training  preparatory  to  the  higher 
education  or  the  learned  professions;  he  may  begin 
to  prepare  for  a  business  career;  he  may  take  gen- 
eral industrial  courses  leading  up  to  the  study  of  a 
trade ;  or  he  may  go  to  work,  returning  to  the  school 
a  part  of  the  time  for  supplementary  instruction. 
At  sixteen  he  is  free  and  the  lines  of  study  open  to 
him  become  more  specialized.  His  previous  train- 
ing, if  it  has  been  broad  and  properly  adapted,  will 
have  begun  at  least  the  process  of  adjusting  him  to 
his  environment  and  will  therefore  have  given  him 
a  broader  basis  upon  which  to  build  his  choice  of  a 
vocation.  At  this  age  the  youth  who  is  going  into 
a  trade  has  as  good  a  right  to  the  means  of  educa- 
tion as  has  the  boy  who  has  decided  upon  a  profes- 


30  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

sion.  It  is  wrong  to  pave  the  road  to  the  profes- 
sions and  to  leave  "the  right  of  way"  to  the  trades 
and  to  business  and  other  useful  occupations  unsur- 
veyed.  To  do  so,  sets  a  false  standard.  The  stamp 
of  approval  is  put  on  professional  work  and  the 
other  is  negatively  disapproved  as  an  object  of 
worthy  ambition.  As  a  result,  the  professions  be- 
come overcrowded  with  mediocre  men  and  the 
skilled  trades  and  occupations  with  poorly  trained 
men,  and  great  armies  of  unskilled  workers  fill  the 
ranks  of  the  unemployed  and,  unfortunately  often, 
unemployable.  Under  these  conditions,  standards 
are  lowered,  industry  and  business  languish,  gov- 
ernments are  corrupted,  social  unrest  is  everywhere 
found  and  a  vicious  form  of  class  education  is  the 
direct  result. 

It  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  democracy  that  that 
f  which  concerns  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  people  should 
be  sacrificed  to  that  which  concerns  ten  per  cent. 
The  greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number  is  not 
thus  attained.  Yet  colleges  preceded  primary  schools 
in  this  country  and  received  legislative  sanction  and 
liberal  aid  from  the  state  long  before  free  public 
schools  were  provided.  Thomas  Jefferson  outlined 
a  system  of  universal  education  including  free  com- 
mon schools,  secondary  schools  and  a  college,  but 
the  only  part  of  the  plan  which  was  adopted  was  the 
latter — the  University  of  Virginia.  In  fact,  it  was 
rather  late  in  the  last  century  before  our  states  be- 


PASSING   EDUCATION    AROUND      31 

gan  to  establish  free  public  schools.  But  free 
schools  came  and  eventually  compulsory  educa- 
tion in  most  of  the  states.  It  looked  like  the 
dawn  of  universal  education.  But  conditions 
changed  so  rapidly  and  the  traditional  course 
of  study  was  so  rigid  that  the  result  was  uni- 
versal education  in  name  but  not  in  substance.  A 
new  industrial  and  social  environment  demanded  a 
corresponding  expansion  in  education.  New  needs 
grew  up  in  the  complex  condition.  Old  methods 
of  training  for  trades,  business,  farm  and  home 
were  abandoned  or  rendered  almost  obsolete.  The 
apprenticeship  system  broke  down  and  no  agency 
was  left  but  the  school  to  perform  the  huge  task  of 
adjusting  the  race  to  its  environment.  That  which 
looked  like  universal  education  in  an  earlier  time 
became  by  social  and  industrial  progression,  a  par- 
tial and  inadequate  education,  for  the  demands  of 
the  new  day.  Indeed  it  is  doubtful  if  the  schools, 
viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  universal  education, 
come  as  near  to  filling  their  true  functions  in  these 
times  as  the  much  less  efficient  schools  did  for  their 
times  a  few  generations  ago. 

The  influences  which  have  thwarted  the  develop- 
ment of  universal  education  are  many  and  subtle. 
Chief  among  these  are :  a  wrong  idea  of  the  purpose 
of  education;  a  pedagogy  based  upon  a  worn-out 
philosophy;  an  educational  "standpatism"  which  re- 
fuses to  seek  the  truth ;  and  an  aristocracy  of  educa- 


32  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

tion  which  successfully  has  kept  a  firm  grip  on  the 
direction  of  educational  effort.  All  of  these  com- 
bined have  formed  a  wall  of  ignorance,  cupidity  and 
selfishness  which  it  is  very  difficult  to  break  through. 

Movements  have  been  started  for  vocational  train- 
ing as  a  step  in  universal  education.  Forthwith  we 
have  heard  raised  the  "hue  and  cry"  that  culture, 
without  any  proffer  to  define  the  term,  is  the  only 
worthy  end  of  education.  The  idealist  comes  for- 
ward and  prates  about  the  development  of  classes, 
as  if  no  education  would  preserve  a  happy  state  of 
social  equality  while  a  useful  education  would  de- 
stroy it.  The  standpatter  declares  against  doing 
anything  which  will  require  him  to  think,  and  lastly 
the  aristocrat,  whether  of  profession,  trade,  or  call- 
ing, sees  to  it  that  the  education  given  in  his  par- 
ticular line  shall  be  not  too  common. 

In  such  conditions,  we  have  the  spectacle  of 
the  elementary  and  high  schools,  the  colleges  and 
universities,  driving  out  the  youth  who  can  not  jump 
over  the  educational  hurdles  at  the  right  pace.  We 
find  many  of  the  professional  schools  and  even  trade 
schools  setting  up  requirements  for  entrance  and  in 
the  courses,  which  have  no  relation  to  the  study  or 
practise  of  the  professions  or  trades  they  teach,  but 
which  serve  to  eliminate  some  more  "unfits."  We 
find  the  trade  school  too  often  catering  to  the  few 
"learned  trades"  and  aspiring  to  become  a  technical 


PASSING   EDUCATION    AROUND      33 

college.  And  we  find  agricultural  schools  and  col- 
leges devoting  their  attention  largely  to  the  high- 
brow farmer  and  to  the  turning  out  of  gentlemen 
farmers  and  scientific  experts,  instead  of  meeting 
the  needs  of  the  man  on  the  farm  who  can  not  go 
to  the  university  but  must  get  what  he  can  within 
walking  distance  of  home. 

In  a  democracy,  the  problem  of  universal  educa- 
tion is  twofold.  While  preparing  all  people  to  make * 
a  living  and  to  live,  the  educational  system  must 
also  keep  open  the  way  for  the  humblest  to  attain 
the  very  highest  plane  which  he  is  capable  of  reach- 
ing. It  must  prepare  not  merely  for  leadership 
but  for  the  discovery  of  potential  leadership  in  the 
mass.  All  grades  of  schools  should  therefore  be 
provided  at  public  expense.  It  is  a  mistake  to  as- 
sume that  universal  education  as  expressed  in  voca- 
tional education  is  antagonistic  to  high  schools  and 
colleges.  It  may  change  their  methods  and  point  of 
view  and  make  them  more  efficient,  but  the  purpose 
is  not  to  destroy  but  to  supplement.  The  demand 
is  simply  that  we  do  for  all  youth  what  the  high* 
schools  and  colleges  are  doing  for  some  by  finding 
out  the  needs  of  youth  and  striving  to  meet  them  in 
practical  fashion.  Democracy  needs  efficient  educa- 
tion for  the  rank  and  file  as  well  as  for  the  leaders. 

Observation  and  common  knowledge  show  that 
the  kind  of  education  by  which  the  mass  of  people 
may  profit  has  to  do  with  their  occupation  or  their 


34  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

life  career.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  the  people  earn  their 
living  with  their  hands  and  their  chief  interest  after 
maturity  is  in  their  occupation,  their  home  and  the 
social  and  civic  life  of  the  community. 

Not  many  perhaps  have  heretofore  learned  a  voca- 
tion. Desirable  as  it  may  be  to  do  so,  not  all  youth 
will  study  a  vocation  even  when  the  facilities  are 
provided  to  train  them  for  it.  In  fact,  the  number 
in  school  who  will  actually  pick  an  industrial  voca- 
tion at  sixteen  will  not  seriously  burden  the  facili- 
ties which  the  schools  may  readily  provide.  It  takes 
foresight  and  steadiness  of  purpose  to  choose  a  vo- 
cation and  prepare  for  it.  There  is  to  the  boy  what 
seems  an  easier  way.  Too  often,  he  takes  the  path 
of  least  resistance  and  drifts  into  "blind  alley"  and 
"no  thoroughfare"  jobs.  There  comes  a  time  in  his 
life,  however,  when  sobered  by  work  and  experi- 
ence, he  realizes  his  handicap  and  is  ready  to  turn 
seriously  to  the  means  of  training  himself  for  bet- 
ter things.  This  new  purpose  may  come  early  or  it 
may  be  delayed,  but  if  the  ordained  agencies  of 
education  are  alive  to  their  responsibilities,  they  will 
be  constantly  on  the  alert  to  open  the  way  for  each 
individual  and  provide  the  means  to  make  the  "way 
out"  a  reality.  The  opportunity  must  be  provided 
for  all,  for  "equality  of  opportunity  is  the  essence  of 
democracy." 

The  plan  for  universal  education  must  frankly 
recognize,  therefore,  that  practically  all  education 


PASSING    EDUCATION   AROUND     35 

for  youth  over  fourteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age  who 
are  out  of  school  must  be  connected  with  their  occu- 
pational interests.  If  their  occupation  has  been 
chosen  wisely,  the  youth  and  the  adult  will  find  the 
life-career  motive  impelling  him  to  perfect  himself 
in  the  work  he  is  doing,  or  has  been  driven  to  do. 
If  the  occupation  has  not  been  chosen  wisely,  there 
will  be  a  constant  effort  at  readjustment  on  the  part 
of  progressive  men  and  women.  Encouragement 
should  be  given  and  the  means  of  education  pro- 
vided both  for  those  who  have  found  a  permanent 
vocation  and  those  who  have  not,  to  continue  their 
education  in  order  to  seek  greater  efficiency  or  a 
satisfactory  adjustment  to  a  better  life  career.  With- 
out such  encouragement  men  and  women  find  their 
work  dreary  monotony;  hope  for  the  future  is 
dimmed;  aimless  drifting  from  job  to  job  results, 
and  social  unrest  is  fomented.  The  results  are  dis- 
astrous to  individual  progress  and  to  social  welfare. 
Universal  education  seeks  to  make  progress  pos-' 
sible  for  all  people,  through  an  articulation  of 
knowledge  with  the  vocational  work  in  which  they 
engage.  The  knowledge  imparted  will  be  simple  or 
complex  to  fit  the  needs  of  the  unskilled  workers, 
the  skilled  artisan,  or  the  trained  business  or  pro- 
fessional man.  To  realize  the  ideal  of  universality, 
the  agencies  of  education  must  make  a  close  analysis 
of  the  occupations  of  men  without  prejudice  to  the 
humblest  job  in  which  the  crudest  intellects  and  most 


36  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

unskilled  hands  labor.  Even  there  knowledge  and 
training  may  be  established  which  will  protect  life, 
preserve  strength,  and  make  for  a  more  "comforta- 
ble subsistence.',  From  the  data  of  occupations  a 
program  for  a  complete  system  of  education  may 
be  readily  worked  out,  the  guiding  purpose  of  which 
shall  be  to  give  equal,  if  not  identical,  opportunity  to 
all  "to  grow  in  power  and  appreciation." 

But,  it  is  objected,  how  can  education  be  made 
directly  applicable  to  the  hundreds  of  vocations  and 
possible  lines  of  work?  Is  not  the  system  founded 
upon  a  theory  of  perfection  not  to  be  attained? 
Granted  that  the  problem  is  a  vast  one  and  almost 
untouched,  that  is  no  excuse  for  delay  in  undertak- 
ing it.  The  importance  of  it  to  the  public  welfare 
is  so  great  that  no  time  should  be  lost  on  critics  who 
point  out  its  difficulties.  "The  way  to  resume  is  to 
resume"  was  a  famous  phrase  and  its  applicability 
to  our  situation  is  striking. 

Happily  there  are  examples  in  our  midst  for 
guidance.  Experience  has  been  accumulating  until 
a  respectable  body  of  reliable  facts  and  practise  may 
be  utilized  for  our  purposes.  More  than  a  hundred 
separate  trades  are  being  taught  in  different  public 
and  private  schools  in  this  country,  not  to  draw 
upon  the  experience  of  foreign  countries  where  in 
one  city  alone — Munich — more  than  fifty  trades  are 
taught.  Add  to  all  of  these  the  education  which  is 
given  as  a  foundation  for  several  vocations  and  we 


PASSING    EDUCATION   AROUND      37 

find  examples  of  a  practical  and  complete  vocational 
education  given  in  a  large  part  of  the  most  impor- 
tant vocations  in  which  men  earn  their  daily  bread. 

But,  persists  the  critic,  what  are  you  going  to  do 
in  the  communities  which  can  not  provide  a  means 
of  education  in  more  than  two  or  three  vocations  at 
the  most?  Are  you  going  to  educate  every  boy  as 
a  carpenter  or  a  blacksmith?  There  is  a  danger 
here  to  be  sure,  but  it  is  more  or  less  imaginary 
and  at  most  only  temporary.  The  school  in  decid- 
ing what  it  can  teach  in  a  vocational  way  with  its 
limited  means,  must  consider  local  conditions  and 
advantages.  If  there  is  some  preponderating  voca- 
tion in  the  community  which  most  of  the  youth  will 
eventually  enter,  the  problem  is  somewhat  simple. 
The  natural  and  effective  thing  to  do  is  to  teach 
that  vocation  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  men  effi- 
cient and  to  broaden  their  powers  as  workers  in  it. 
For  the  vocations  in  which  only  a  few  are  employed, 
the  school  can  not  maintain  distinct  trade  courses 
but  it  can  group  the  fundamentals  of  several  voca- 
tions in  such  a  way  as  to  give  a  solid  foundation 
supplementing  the  practical  training  of  the  vocation 
received  in  actual  practise.  For  example,  a  sys- 
tematic education  in  blue-print  reading  will  be  of 
fundamental  educational  value  to  many  trades. 

In  smaller  places  the  workers  may  have  to  go  to 
neighboring  cities  for  special  trades.  In  some  cases 
in  the  more  thickly  settled  communities  two  or  more 


38  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

communities  may  join  together  for  the  maintenance 
of  vocational  schools  as  contemplated  in  the  laws  of 
Massachusetts  and  Indiana.  In  all  schools  whether 
in  cities,  towns  or  rural  districts  there  can  be  such 
an  industrializing  of  the  regular  school  work  as  will 
lay  the  foundations  for  vocational  work  and  at  the 
same  time  give  a  better  industrial  understanding  and 
social  sympathy. 


CHAPTER  III  ' 

WHEREIN  THE  PRESENT  SYSTEM  FAILS 

Statistics  of  school  attendance — Why  children  leave  school — 
Neglect  of  life-career  motive — What  does  education  do  for 
those  who  quit  school  early — Schools  fail  to  train  for  self- 
preservation — Little  vocational  training — Rural  education  un- 
suited  to  needs — The  weaknesses  of  agricultural  colleges — 
Development  of  agricultural  science — Science  of  commerce 
and  industry  still  dormant — Important  education  obtainable 
only  in  nooks  and  corners — Schools  train  for  higher  grades — 
No  stopping  place — Education  stops  at  the  school  door — Re- 
sults of  education  obtainable  only  by  a  few — The  raw  materi- 
als to  work  upon. 

How  far  are  the  schools  meeting  the  needs  of  the 
people  of  this  country  in  supplying  education  which 
adjusts  the  individual  to  his  environment,  and  how 
nearly  does  our  system  provide  that  universal  educa- 
tion required  if  the  schools  are  really  and  truly  to 
become  the  "hope  of  this  democracy"  ? 

The  Report  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of 
Education  for  1913  states  that  seventy-eight  per 
cent,  of  the  persons  between  five  and  eighteen  years 
of  age  were  enrolled  in  schools,  and  that  the  average 
daily  attendance  in  all  schools  w#s  fifty-eight  per 
cent,  of  the  total  enrolled,  while  the  average  daily 
attendance  was  for  less  than  ninety  days.  But  these 
figures  in  the  aggregate  are  not  so  impressive  as 

39 


40  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

those  which  indicate  the  time  when  children  leave 
school.  The  best  estimates  available — most  schools 
do  not  keep  statistics  on  this  important  phase — indi-^/ 
cate  that  fully  ten  per  cent,  have  left  the  school  at 
thirteen;  forty  at  fourteen;  seventy  at  fifteen,  and 
eighty-five  at  sixteen  years  of  age.1 

Statistics  of  their  advancement  are  even  more 
impressive  since  we  have  set  up  the  standard  of 
graduation  from  the  elementary  schools  as  the  mini- 
mum of  schooling  for  the  youth  of  the  land. 

It  may  be  stated  according  to  Ayres  that  the  gen- 
eral tendency  of  city  school  systems  is  to  carry  all 
of  the  children  through  the  fifth  grade.  About  half . 
of  the  total  reach  the  final  elementary  grade  and 
about  ten  per  cent,  reach  the  final  year  in  high 
school.  These  percentages  vary  in  different  cities. 
Typical  examples  of  high  percentages  retained  to 
the  final  year  in  high  school  are : 

Newton,  Mass 38  per  cent. 

Worcester,  Mass 29  per  cent. 

Aurora,  111 25  per  cent. 

Newark,  Ohio 25  per  cent. 

Decatur,  111 24  per  cent. 

Haverhill,  Mass 24  per  cent. 

Fitchburg,  Mass 23  per  cent. 

Kansas  City,  Mo 22  per  cent. 

Somerville,   Mass 22  per  cent. 


1  Ayres*  Laggards  in  Our  Schools,  p.  31. 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  41 

At  the  other  extreme  are,  Chicago,  Cincinnati, 
Paterson  (N.  J.)  and  Reading  (Pa.),  where  five 
per  cent,  reach  the  final  high-school  grade;  Ho- 
boken,  where  four  per  cent,  reach  the  final  high- 
school  grade,  and  Camden,  Jersey  City,  Newark, 
New  York,  Philadelphia  and  Wheeling,  where  only 
three  per  cent,  reach  the  final  high-school  grade. 

The  point  at  which  pupils  leave  school  varies, 
although  on  the  average  one-half  have  left  before 
the  completion  of  the  elementary  grades.  Some 
cities  begin  to  lose  pupils  in  large  numbers  as  early 
as  the  fourth  and  fifth  grades.  While  in  one  city — 
Quincy,  Massachusetts — eighty-two  per  cent,  of  all 
who  enter  go  through  the  elementary  grades. 

It  is  evident  from  these  figures  that  the  ideal  of 
universal  education  is  not  being  realized  by  the 
schools.  Millions  of  the  youth  of  the  land  have 
left  the  schools  with  no  further  preparation  than 
that  given  by  the  first  four,  five  or  six  grades,  and 
practically  no  facilities  have  been  provided  for  any 
further  training  at  public  expense. 

Universal  education  is  not  a  reality  for  the  coun- 
try as  a  whole,  nor  for  any  single  community,  since 
for  different  parts  of  the  country  thirty  to  fifty  per 
cent,  do  not  reach  the  final  elementary  grade,  and 
in  the  city  having  the  most  favorable  record  sixteen 
per  cent,  do  not  receive  a  complete  elementary 
schooling,  nor  do  they  get  any  after-training 
through  the  public  schools. 


42  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

Commenting  upon  the  record  of  school  attend- 
ance for  1913,  the  commissioner  of  education  said: 
"An  average  of  ninety  days  in  school  and  two  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five  out  of  school  gives  a  danger- 
ously small  amount  of  schooling  for  the  future 
citizens  of  our  democratic  republic.  ...  At 
this  rate  the  total  average  schooling  for  each 
child  to  prepare  it  for  life  and  for  making  a  living, 
for  society  and  the  duties  of  citizenship,  is  only  one 
thousand  one  hundred  and  seventy  days."2 

An  analysis  shows  several  reasons  for  the  abnor- 
mal defection  from  school,  chief  of  which  are: 
inability  to  forego  wage-earning ;  failure  to  respond 
to  the  formal  teaching  of  the  book;  unsuitability  of 
subject-matter  to  the  needs  and_capacities  of  the 
pupil ;  and,  lastly,  the  fact  which  is  plain  to  all 
parents  and  pupils,  that  at  the  end  of  each  successive 
grade  the  students  are  in  no  better  position  to  enter 
upon  a  life  career  than  before. 

All  of  these  reasons  why  children  leave  school  J 
center  around  the  failure  to  connect  the  school  with  ' 
the  life-career  motive  of  the  learner.  The  life- 
career  motive  is  the  principal  impelling  force  keep- 
ing children  in  school  after  the  compulsory  period, 
and  the  schools  in  failing  to  give  broad  vocational 
training  neglect  the  means  of  utilizing  this  motive. 

What  is  it  that  inspires  men  and  women  to  apply 
themselves  to  the  tasks  of  study  with  earnestness? 


2  Report  1913,  p.  xvi. 


THE   PRESENT    SYSTEM  43 

Primarily,  it  is  the  motive  of  personaTajdyaiicement. 
Show  a  man  how  he  can  better  his  economic  condi- 
tion by  acquiring  further  knowledge  and  he  will 
assiduously  seek  to  acquire  it  if  his  ambition  has  not 
atrophied ;  show  a  youth  how  the  knowledge  which 
the  school  gives  couples  up  with  a  life-work  or  even 
a  temporary  employment,  and  he  seeks  the  knowl- 
edge eagerly;  and  show  an  ambitious  worker  how 
he  can  overcome  the  difficulties  of  his  trade  by 
evening  courses  or  correspondence  work  and  he 
applies  himself  to  study  with  vigor. 

It  is  the  life-career  motive  that  makes  students  of 
professional,  normal,  industrial  and  trade  schools 
more  diligent  in  their  work,  and  the  results  more 
fruitful.  Decry  as  we  may  the  practical  in  educa- 
tion, we  are  confronted  by  the  fact  that  young  and 
old  alike  respond  to  the  stimulus  of  applying  knowl- 
edge practically,  and  are  languid  and  purposeless  in 
the  pursuit  of  knowledge  the  utility  of  which  they 
can  not  see. 

But  this  motive  so  essential  for  effective  educa- 
tion is  quite  generally  neglected  in  the  schools.  In- 
deed, it  is  often  discouraged.  President  Eliot  de- 
clares that  the  schools  fail  to  perform  the  animating 
and  selective  task  of  arousing  and  maintaining  the 
interests  of  pupils,  especially  from  twelve  to  sixteen 
years  of  age. 

"Multitudes  of  American  children,"  he  says, 
"taking  no  interest  in  their  school  work,  or  seeing 


44  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

no  connection  between  their  studies  and  the  means 
of  later  earning  a  good  livelihood,  drop  out  of 
school  far  too  early  of  their  own  accord,  or  at  least 
offer  no  effective  resistance  to  the  desire  of  unwise 
parents  that  they  stop  study  and  go  to  work.  More- 
over, from  lack  of  interest,  they  acquire  while  in 
school  a  listless  way  of  working. 

"Again,  interest  in  their  studies  is  not  universal 
among  that  small  proportion  of  American  children 
who  go  into  a  secondary  school ;  and  in  every  college 
a  perceptible  proportion  of  the  students  exhibit  a 
languid  interest,  or  no  interest,  in  their  studies,  and 
therefore  bring  little  to  pass  during  the  very  pre- 
cious years  of  college  life."3 

What  does  education  do  for  the  fifty  per  cent,  of 
the  nation's  children  who  leave  the  schools  before 
completing  the  elementary  courses  ?  Has  education 
performed  its  functions  of  adjusting  these  millions 
to  the  conditions  in  which  they  are  placed  and  im- 
planting in  them  the  inspiration  to  grow  in  power 
and  appreciation  ? 

j  These  are  questions  to  which  a  militant  democ- 
racy is  beginning  to  seek  an  answer.  Having  an- 
swered these  questions,  it  might  be  in  order  to  con- 
sider the  case  of  the  forty  per  cent,  who  go  through 
the  elementary  school  and  partly  through  the  high 
school ;  and,  lastly,  the  case  of  the  ten  per  cent,  who 
graduate  from  high  school,  some  of  whom  get  into 
college,  to  see  how  nearly  the  schools  come  to  tjae 
ideal  of  education  for  them. 

3  Address,  National  Educational  Association,  Boston,  1910. 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  45 

It  will  be  taken  for  granted  that  education  must 
give  as  a  minimum  the  possession  of  the  tools  of 
knowledge  and  of  fundamental  facts,  and  should 
establish  "habits,  attitudes  and  ideals."  All  after- 
education,  general  or  vocational,  can  be  built  only 
upon  such  a  foundation.  Doubtless,  the  essential 
tools,  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic,  are  taught 
with  a  keener  appreciation  of  their  fundamental 
importance  than  ever  before,  but  it, would  be  a  bold 
person  who  would  assume  that  any  considerable 
portion  of  the  children  in  the  group  who  leave  school 
at  fourteen,  or  before,  are  equipped  with  power  to 
read  interpretatively,  to  express  clearly,  or  to  do  the 
ordinary  every-day  computations.  Yet  these  are  all  / 
essential  to  their  freedom  and  their  protection. 

What  else  is  given  to  these  millions  of  our  youth 
by  the  school?  Practically  nothing.  Not  one  in  a 
thousand  derive  other  benefits.  It  gives  little  knowl- 
edge conducive  to  self-preservation  or  that  will 
facilitate  gaining  a  livelihood,  leaving  such  knowl- 
edge to  be  picked  up  at  random  in  after  life ;  it  gives 
slight  knowledge  of  the  duties  of  home  or  of  parent- 
hood, and  little  power  or  insight  into  the  duties  of 
citizenship.  These  great  masses  of  children,  un- 
equipped for  life,  are  cast  into  the  industrial  strug- 
gle. Lack  of  knowledge  makes  their  experience 
blind.  The  way  of  progress  is  barred  because  they 
do  not  have  the  necessary  tools  to  weld  experience 
and  knowledge  into  power  for  success.    Practically 


46  LEARNING   TO    EARN 


all  are  doomed  to  hard  monotonous  toil,  without 


hope  or  outlook  to  relieve  it. 

To  take  up  the  matter  more  specifically,  there  is 
little  teaching  of  value  in  the  schools  of  this  country 
relating  to  the  first  problem  of  man's  existence,  that 
of  self-preservation.  Aside  from  attempts  at  teach- 
ing physiology  and  hygiene,  and  the  effects  of  alco- 
hol and  narcotics,  which  many  states  now  require, 
there  is  no  attempt  to  guard  man  through  knowledge 
from  the  dangers  which  beset  his  path.  Even  the 
teaching  of  physiology,  hygiene  and  the  effects  of 
alcohol  and  narcotics  is  so  inefficiently  done  in  many 
cases  as  to  raise  the  question  of  the  utility,  if  not 
the  morality,  of  their  teaching. 

A  minute  search  of  educational  institutions,  col- 
legiate as  well  as  elementary,  would  disclose  no  im- 
portant teaching  intended  to  guard  the  worker 
through  knowledge  from  the  dangers  of  industrial 
accidents  and  diseases.  "Safety  first"  campaigns 
for  industrial  safety  are  planned  and  conducted  out- 
side the  school  and  with  no  particular  sympathy 
shown  by  the  schools.  It  is  as  though  the  school 
considered  its  function  to  be  wholly  unrelated  to  the 
ordinary  daily  life  of  the  individual,  and  that  all 
things  relating  to  his  physical  welfare  contaminate 
the  holy  precincts  of  education. 

Plenty  of  examples  may  be  found  where  food 
values  for  hogs  and  cattle  are  taught,  but  the  diet  of 
human  beings  is  a  matter  which  drags  educational 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  47 


ideals  in  the  mire.  Diseases  of  plants  and  animals 
are  intelligently  studied,  but  outside  the  medical  col- 
leges the  diseases  of  human  beings  are  scarcely 
alluded  to.  Yet,  the  new  day  demands  a  study  of 
all  these  things  relating  to  man's  physical  welfare. 
Conditions  of  living  have  changed.  The  complex- 
ities of  man's  dependence  are  such  that  organized 
instruction  for  self -protection  is  now  an  absolute 
necessity,  and  the  school  is  the  only  public  agency 
in  a  position  to  give  it. 

Education  was  formerly  almost  exclusively  voca- 
tional. The  few  that  were  educated  in  the  schools 
were  educated  for  some  calling.  The  education  of 
the  prince,  when  education  was  confined  to  princes, 
was  vocational.  When  learning  was  confined  largely 
to  the  clergy,  men  were  trained  for  the  church.  The 
Athenian  ideal  of  education  was  for  the  perform- 
ance of  the  duties  of  citizenship,  and  citizens  were 
trained.  The  Romans  added  law  and  trained  for 
that  vocation.  The  Middle  Ages  saw  great  univer- 
sities of  law,  medicine  and  theology.  These  pro- 
fessions were  the  ends  of  education  and  remained 
so  for  many  centuries,  almost  down  to  our  own 
times.  All  that  men  needed  to  know  about  the  other 
vocations  was  gained  by  other  means  than  formal 
education.  The  need  for  education  in  other  prac- 
tical callings  was  not  great,  and  the  means  were  at 
hand  in  the  apprenticeship  system. 

We  still  train  men  in  the  vocations  of  the  church, 


48  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

the  law  and  medicine,  and  to  these  have  been  added 
many  other  vocations  for  which  some  preparation  is 
given.  But  we  find  that  vastly  wider  training  is 
needed  to  meet  the  complexities  of  our  progressive 
civilized  life.  The  democratic  ideal,  too,  has  em- 
phasized that  every  man  must  have  equal  opportu- 
nity not  merely  to  get  a  particular  kind  of  education, 
but  to  get  that  kind  of  education  best  suited  to  his 
need  and  capacity.  The  old  scheme  of  education 
for  practical  arts  has  broken  down  and  men  are 
adrift  in  the  mazes  of  industrial  life.  Where  voca- 
tional education  a  few  decades  ago  met  the  condi- 
tions by  educating  for  the  few  learned  professions, 
it  must  now  educate  for  the  many  practical  arts  as 
well  as  the  learned  vocations.  The  obligation  is 
specially  emphasized  by  the  fact  that  the  education 
of  to-day  is  principally  at  public  expense,  and  there 
can  be  no  proper  discrimination. 

The  schools  have  not  met  the  new  conditions. 
They  have  not  kept  pace  with  the  changing  life. 
They  have  undoubtedly  taught  well  the  things  which 
they  have  taught,  but  the  question  now  before  the 
public  concerns  the  usefulness  of  teaching  much 
that  is  taught.  Certain  it  is  that  as  far  as  fitting 
youth  to  meet  his  most  urgent  problem — that  of 
earning  a  living — very  little  has  been  accomplished. 

The  Federal  Commission  on  Vocational  Educa- 
tion declared  that  not  more  than  one  person  in  a 
hundred  had  been  trained  properly  for  the  work 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  49 

they  were  doing.  "There  are  more  workers  being 
trained  at  public  expense,"  the  report  declares,  "in 
the  city  of  Munich,  Germany,  than  in  all  the  great 
cities  of  the  United  States  representing  a  population 
of  more  than  12,000,000." 

Agricultural  colleges  are  found  in  every  state,  but 
until  very  recent  times,  and  largely  yet,  these  insti- 
tutions were  colleges  for  the  preparation  of  scien- 
tists— not  for  farmers  who  work  on  the  soil.  No 
serious  attempt  has  been  made  until  recently  to 
know  what  kind  of  knowledge  the  farmer,  as  a 
farmer,  needed,  and  instead  of  giving  courses  suited 
to  his  needs,  there  grew  up  the  scientific  agricultural 
college  with  absurd  academic  entrance  requirements 
and  courses  which  barred  the  very  people  it  should 
reach. 

The  development  in  this  way  had,  however,  one 
compensation.  It  created  a  body  of  literature  relat- 
ing to  the  scientific  process  of  agriculture  and  thus 
gave  the  materials  to  be  translated  into  terms  under-- 
standable  by  the  farmer.  It  has  opened  the  way  for 
the  development  of  real  vocational  education  in  agri- 
culture. The  next  step  is  to  put  the  knowledge  of 
agriculture  now  existing  into  the  hands  of  every 
person  who  tills  the  soil.  "It  is  obviously  less  impor- 
tant," said  Lester  F.  Ward,  "that  a  great  amount  of 
intelligence  shall  exist  than  that  the  data  of  intelli- 
gence shall  be  in  the  possession  of  all,"  and  the 
application  of  the  thought  to  agriculture  is  striking. 


50  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

This  has  not  been  done,  and  after  forty  years  of 
agricultural  education,  such  as  it  has  been,  we  are 
confronted  with  worse  conditions  than  when  knowl- 
edge of  agriculture  first  began  to  get  serious  atten- 
tion. Average  yields  of  farm  crops  have  been  either 
practically  at  a  dead  level  or  are  decreasing,  the  soil 
is  being  exhausted  at  an  alarming  rate,  tenantry  is 
increasing,  the  rural  population  is  shifting  to  the 
city,  and  the  cost  of  living  rises  at  a  rate  far  in 
excess  of  increased  capacity  to  pay.  The  facts  are 
simply  that  the  data  of  agricultural  science  have  not 
been  put  into  possession  of  the  men  who  till  the  soil. 

The  state  colleges  and  schools  of  agriculture,  the 
state  experiment  stations,  the  extension  departments 
and  the  county  agents  of  agriculture  are  doing  a 
great  work  in  diffusing  the  knowledge  fundamental 
to  a  farmer's  work.  But  the  results  so  much  needed 
can  only  be  permanently  achieved  by  educating  the 
boy  in  a  vocational  school  of  agriculture  within  his 
reach,  to  be  a  farmer  capable  of  applying  knowledge 
to  his  soil,  and  the  girl  who  is  happy  in  the  country 
to  be  a  home-maker  in  the  farm  home. 

Much  has  been  done  in  many  parts  of  the  country 
due  to  the  vision  and  initiative  of  individuals.  The 
rural  schools  as  a  whole  have,  however,  been  sleep- 
ing on  their  opportunity.  They  have  been  following 
a  regimen  of  studies  utterly  unfitted  to  their  environ- 
ment.   The  teaching  of  reading,  writing,  arithmetic, 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  51 


geography,  spelling,  grammar,  history  and  other 
elementary  studies  has  been  formal  to  a  degree  that 
is  shocking  to  common  sense.  Instead  of  relating 
these  studies  to  the  life  motives  of  the  young,  and 
teaching  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  connect  them  with 
life;  instead  of  taking  advantage  of  the  opportu- 
nities which  in  the  country  are  unequaled  for  apply- 
ing knowledge  to  things,  the  schools  have  been 
allowing  the  children  to  live  off  the  dry  husks  of 
knowledge.  Teachers  for  these  schools  have  been 
trained  in  the  village  or  city  high  schools  and  have 
perhaps  gone  through  formal  training  in  normals  or 
colleges.  They  have  little  sympathy  with  rural  life 
and  their  knowledge  of  the  country  is  limited.  It  is 
ridiculous  to  see  a  teacher  of  this  sort,  who  may  not 
know  barley  from  beans,  attempting  to  teach  agri- 
culture in  a  flower-pot  in  the  winter  time  to  red- 
blooded  rural  youth.  Such  has  been  the  teaching  in 
a  great  part  of  our  rural  schools.  False  standards 
are  set  up,  boys  and  girls  are  made  to  dislike  edu- 
cational work,  and  such  influence  as  the  school 
exercises  is  in  favor  of  the  trend  away  from  the 
country. 

But  inadequate  as  it  has  been,  progress  has  been 
greater  in  agricultural  education,  including  the  farm 
home,  than  in  the  education  for  industry  or  com- 
merce. At  least  the  scientific  data  for  such  educa- 
tion have  been  partly  discovered  and  formulated. 


52  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Beginnings  in  the  discovery  and  formulation  of  the 
scientific  data  for  industry  and  commerce  have 
scarcely  been  made. 

Agricultural  experiment  stations  have  supplied 
the  raw  materials  to  work  out  the  pattern  of  educa- 
tion for  the  farm  and  the  home.  Industrial  and 
commercial  experiment  stations  have  yet  to  be 
organized  in  the  same  large  way  to  supply  the  raw 
material  to  solve  the  problem  of  education  for  in- 
dustry and  commerce. 

No  adequate  knowledge  of  the  processes  of  indus- 
try and  commerce,  the  needs  of  workers  or  the  con- 
ditions of  efficiency  and  success  are. available  upon 
which  to  base  a  sound  industrial  or  commercial  edu- 
cation. So  far  as  these  callings  are  concerned,  the 
schools  must  begin  at  the  very  beginning  and  build 
up  the  scientific  data  and  make  its  application  to  the 
needs  of  industry  and  commerce  and  the  workers 
engaged  in  them. 

Herbert  Spencer,  speaking  of  the  English  schools 
of  fifty  years  ago,  foretold  the  weaknesses  of  our 
own  schools  in  this  respect  when  he  said  that  that 
which  most  concerns  the  business  of  life  is  almost 
entirely  left  out  of  our  schools. 

"All  of  our  industries  would  cease,"  he  said, 
"were  it  not  for  that  information  which  men  begin 
to  acquire  as  they  best  may  after  their  education  is 
said  to  be  finished,  and  were  it  not  for  this  informa- 
tion which  has  been  from  age  to  age  accumulated 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  53 

spread  by  unofficial  means,  these  industries 
would  never  have  existed.  That  increasing  ac- 
quaintance with  the  laws  of  phenomena  which  has 
through  successive  ages  enabled  us  to  subjugate 
nature  to  our  needs,  and  in  these  days  gives  the 
common  laborer  comforts  which  a  few  centuries 
ago  kings  could  not  purchase,  is  scarcely  in  any 
degree  owed  to  the  appointed  means  of  instructing 
our  youth.  The  vital  knowledge — that  by  which  we 
have  grown  as  a  nation  to  what  we  are,  and  which 
now  underlies  our  whole  existence — is  a  knowledge 
that  has  gotten  itself  taught  in  nooks  and  corners, 
while  the  ordained  agencies  for  teaching  have  been 
mumbling  dead  formulas." 

One  of  the  most  pointed  criticisms  of  the  schools 
is  that  they  devote  their  energies  to  preparing  pupils 
to  enter  the  next  higher  grade.  The  elementary 
school  prepares  for  the  high  school,  the  high  school 
prepares  for  the  college,  and  the  college  prepares 
for  the  university.  Those  who  fail  to  be  promoted 
are  ignorantly  dubbed  "laggards." 

One  regimen  of  studies  is  set  out  for  the  children 
of  all  the  people  with  little  regard  to  the  sympathies 
and  capacities  of  each.  If  they  can  profit  by  the 
instruction  offered  they  are  advanced  regularly  from 
grade  to  grade  and  graduate  amid  the  praises  of 
friends,  but  if  their  particular  powers  do  not  re- 
spond to  the  uniform  course  and  the  formal  methods 
of  teaching,  they  are  rapidly  made  to  feel  that  their 
place  is  not  in  school. 


54  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

The  justification  of  this  system — if  it  can  be  justi- 
fied at  all — must  be  found  in  the  par  excellence  of 
the  education  which  is  given  in  the  various  grades, 
from  the  kindergarten  to  the  university.  Our  com- 
pulsory education  laws  are  justified  only  on  the 
'  premise  that  the  education  offered  is  the  best  that 
can  be  devised  iof  the  children  who  are  compelled 
to  take  it.  One  fact  is  patent  to  all  educational 
observers,  namely,  that  the  colleges  dominate  the 
high  schools  and  the  high  schools  in  turn  dominate 
the  elementary  schools  by  holding  up  the  bogy  of 
entrance  requirements. 

The  courses  are,  therefore,  generally  shaped  for 
the  few  who  are  headed  for  the  college,  and  the 
needs  of  the  many  are  ignored.  The  impressive  fact 
that  ninety  per  cent,  leave  the  school  along  the  way 
seems  to  be  overlooked  in  organizing  school  courses. 

At  no  place  is  there  any  adequate  terminal  facil- 
ities for  the  youth  who  goes  to  work  short  of  the 
university  professional  school.  Even  the  colleges  do 
'  not  offer  any  particular  connection  with  the  life 
career  except  for  an  insignificant  percentage. 

No  objection  can  be  raised  to  the  openway'  which 
offers  the  chance  to  attain  the  highest  educational 
plane.  It  is  a  fundamental  strength  of  our  democ- 
racy that  opportunity  is  open  to  the  humblest  to  rise 
to  noble  heights  through  learning,  but  it  should  be 
no  less  fundamental  that  the  rights  of  all  to  the 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  55 

equal  enjoyment  of  all  that  they  are  capable  of 
attaining  should  be  promoted. 

The  formality  is  such  in  our  schools  that  educa- 
tion is  looked  upon  as  an  end  to  be  attained  in  the 
period  of  attendance.  It  nowhere  seems  to  be 
looked  upon  as  the  beginning  of  education  which 
should  continue  throughout  life.  School  education 
and  after-education  are  thought  to  be  entirely  differ- 
ent species.  Instead  of  making  the  two  harmonize, 
the  whole  emphasis  is  put  upon  "finishing' '  the  edu- 
cation of  our  boys  and  girls  in  the  schools.  In 
consequence,  the  day  the  youth  leaves  school  his 
education,  except  by  experience,  stops.  How  many 
boys  and  girls  turn  back  to  their  books  afterward? 
That  they  do  not  is  conclusive  proof  that  education 
is  not  a  continuing  process.  The  fortunately  circum- 
stanced go  on  to  college,  where,  to  a  large  extent, 
the  same  formal  methods  produce  like  results. 
Some  take  hold  of  courses  offered  by  private  or 
correspondence  schools  and  get  a  new  hold  on  the 
educational  ladder,  but  the  great  mass  of  youth  cut 
themselves  off  from  all  educational  work  forever. 

Do  the  schools  accomplish  the  prime  purpose  of 
adjusting  the  individual  to  his  environment,  and  do 
they  provide  such  adjustment  for  all  the  individuals 
in  society?  If  further  evidence  were  needed,  it  can 
readily  be  supplied  by  authoritative  contemporary 
criticism. 


56  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

"We  are  confronted  everywhere  in  the  world  by 
this  fact,"  said  President  Nicholas  Murray  Butler, 
"that  while  mankind  is  endeavoring  to  adapt  the 
individual  to  the  environment  by  education  and 
training,  we  have  thus  far  been  successful  only  in 
providing  a  means  of  adaptation  for  the  compara- 
tively few  select  survivors  of  a  long,  arduous  and 
expensive  educational  process.  A  boy,  for  instance, 
beginning  in  the  elementary  school  can  go  on 
through  the  high  school,  the  college  and  the  univer- 
sity and  can  prepare  himself  for  a  career  as  an 
engineer,  whether  civil,  mining,  metallurgical,  me- 
chanical, chemical  or  electric.  The  same  boy  can, 
if  he  prefers,  begin  in  the  elementary  school,  go 
through  high  school,  college  and  university  and  pre- 
pare himself  for  the  practise  of  medicine  and  sur- 
gery, or  for  the  practise  of  law,  or  for  the  duties  of 
the  teacher,  or  as  an  architect.  The  select  few  who 
can  survive  this  process,  and  can  meet  the  cost  ofjt, 
are  able  to  adapt  themselves  to  their  environment 
in  a  most  admirable  fashion  anywhere  in  the  world, 
whether  in  America  or  in  Europe.  They  are  trained 
to  take  hold  of  life  with  a  firm  grip  at  some  partic- 
ular point,  and  then  the  problem  of  success  or  failure 
rests  with  their  own  several  characters  and  abilities. 
Society  has  done  its  part  in  offering  them  an  organ- 
ized and  effective  opportunity  for  preparation. 

"But  to  the  great  mass  of  human  beings  this  op- 
portunity is  not  open.  All  over  the  world  we  have 
now  brought  these  young  people,  by  various  types  of 
compulsory  legislation,  under  the  influence  of  the 
elementary  school  for,  let  us  say,  the  years  from  six 
or  seven  to  thirteen  or  fourteen.  This  great  mass 
of  boys  and  girls  get  the  very  admirable  and  very 
effective  training  of  the  elementary  school,  but  for 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  57 

well-known  economic  reasons  they  can  not  take 
advantage  of  what  society  has  to  offer  beyond  that. 
They  are  compelled  to  go  out  and  take  hold  of  life 
as  best  they  can  at  that  tender  age,  unadapted,  un- 
fitted, with  no  specific  tentacle  ready  to  grip  any 
particular  hanging  rope  on  which  to  climb  to  eco- 
nomic independence  or  security."4 

Doctor  Andrew  S.  Draper  saw  clearly  the  defects 
of  the  schools  and  boldly  expressed  his  views  in 
these  words : 

"When  but  one-third  of  the  children  remain  to 
the  end  of  the  elementary  course,  there  is  something 
the  matter  with  the  schools.  When  half  of  the  men 
who  are  responsible  for  the  business  activities,  and 
who  are  guiding  the  political  life  of  the  country, 
tell  us  that  children  from  the  elementary  schools  are 
not  able  to  do  definite  things  required  in  the  world's 
real  affairs,  there  is  something  the  matter  with  the 
schools.  When  work  seeks  workers  and  young  men 
and  women  are  indifferent  to  it,  or  do  not  know 
how  to  do  it,  there  is  something  the  matter  with  the 
schools."6 

And  again  he  said: 

"Our  elementary  schools  train  for  no  industrial 
employment — they  lead  to  nothing  but  the  secondary 
school,  which  in  turn  leads  to  the  college,  the  uni- 
versity and  the  professional  school,  and  so  very 
exclusively  to  professional  and  managing  occupa- 

4  Vocational  Education,  an  address  before  the  Commercial 
Club  of  Chicago,  1913. 
6  Draper :  American  Education,  p.  275. 


58  LEARNING  TO   EARN 

.■ 

tions.  One  who  goes  out  of  the  school  system  be- 
fore the  end  or  at  the  end  of  the  elementary  course 
is  not  only  unprepared  for  any  vocation  which  will 
be  open  to  him,  but  too  commonly  he  is  without  that 
intellectual  training  which  should  make  him  eager 
for  opportunity  and  incite  him  to  the  utmost  effort 
to  do  just  as  well  as  he  can  whatever  may  be  open 
to  him.  He  goes  without  respect  for  the  manual 
industries  where  he  might  find  work  if  he  could  do 
it.  He  is  without  the  simple  preparation  necessary 
to  do  definite  work  in  an  office  or  a  store.  He  is 
neither  clear  about  his  English  nor  certain  about  his 
figures."6 

Since  the  ideal  of  universal  education  for  adjust- 
ment has  not  been  attained  and  can  be  attained  only 
through  the  occupations  in  which  men  engage,  the 
first  duty  of  the  schools  should  be  to  analyze  the 
vocations  of  life. 

There  are  in  this  country  ten  million  persons  en- 
gaged in  trades  and  industries  who  have  not  been 
properly  trained  for  the  work  they  are  doing  and 
who  are  not  in  a  position  to  grow  in  vocational 
power;  there  are  thirteen  million  farmers  without 
adequate  scientific  and  practical  knowledge  to  suc- 
ceed under  modern  conditions ;  there  are  seven  mil- 
lion persons  engaged  in  commercial  pursuits,  includ- 
ing transportation,  most  of  whom  have  had  scarcely 
any  broad  training  for  their  responsibilities,  and 
there  are  twenty  million  home-makers,  a  large  part 

•Draper:  American  Education,  p.  278. 


THE    PRESENT    SYSTEM  59 

of  whom  are  incapable  through  lack  of  knowledge 
and  training  to  realize  the  ideal  of  the  home  and  to 
make  its  business  side  a  success.  Only  a  small  num- 
ber of  these  workers  have  been  specially  trained  by 
the  educational  system.  While  the  former  means  of 
training  have  been  breaking  down  under  social 
changes,  no  adequate  substitutes  have  been  as  yet 
provided.  It  is  to  these  masses  of  our  population 
that  the  schools  must  first  address  their  efforts  and 
to  the  millions  who  each  year  are  recruited  from  the 
schools  for  the  ranks  of  trade,  industry,  commerce 
and  the  home. 

We  shall  now  proceed  to  analyze  these  great 
occupational  interests  to  determine  their  demands 
and  the  needs  of  the  workers  in  them. 


CHAPTER  IV 

INDUSTRY   AND   ITS   EDUCATIONAL    NEEDS 

The  economic  and  social  basis  of  industrial  progress — Lack 
of  skilled  workers — Exploitation  of  our  natural  resources — 
Collapse  of  trade  union  apprenticeship — Opposition  to  the 
corporation  trade  school — Chaos  in  industry — Waste  caused 
by  industrial  unrest — Cooperation  is  the  ultimate  goal — The 
problem  of  monotony  in  employment — Training  for  accident 
prevention — Our  industrial  history  is  ignored  in  the  schools — 
The  importance  of  a  thoroughgoing  survey  of  industry. 

Developments  in  our  national  life  which  have 
come  about  with  growth  of  the  population  have 
transformed  us  suddenly  from  an  agrarian  into  an 
industrial  society,  whence  have  arisen  economic 
problems  of  vast  import  to  the  comfort  of  our  peo- 
ple. Adjustments  in  industry  have  not  kept  pace 
with  our  need  of  improved  processes  and  greater 
human  skill.  Competition  has  laid  bare  the  shams 
of  our  affected  excellence,  the  hollowness  of  our 
conceit  in  manufacture  and  industrial-  production. 

Two  chief  causes  may  be  assigned  for  the  Amer- 
ican effort  to  grasp  the  problem  of  industry  and 
with  scientific  insight  search  out  and  analyze  its 
ramifications.  They  are  the  widening  conviction 
that  industrial  production  has  failed  to  generate 
wholesome  influences  for  civic  betterment  among 
the  men  and  women  engaged  in  industry  and  the 

60 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         61 

complementary  condition  that  the  products  of  our 
factories  and  workshops  are  inferior  and  hence  our 
opportunity  for  growing  world  trade  restricted. 
"As  the  ability  of  a  nation  to  hold  its  own  against 
other  nations  depends  on  the  skilled  activity  of  its 
units,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,1  "we  see  that  on  such 
knowledge  may<turn  the  national  fate." 

Still  another  explanation  of  the  origin  of  voca- 
tional, or,  in  this  particular  connection,  industrial 
education,  closely  related  to  the  other  two,  is  the 
wide-spread  belief  that  the  public  schools  in  failing 
to  train  young  men  and  women  for  ability  to  earn 
an  abundance  of  good  white  bread,  were  failing  to 
perform  their  most  natural  mission. 

Time  and  again  in  this  country  reformers  have 
failed  to  make  any  headway  with  a  new  program 
until  they  were  able  somehow  to  connect  it  with 
leaks  in  revenue  or  loss- of  profit.  Once  they  were 
able  to  show  the  connection  between  an  obsolete 
order  and  growing  deficits,  little  effort  was  neces- 
sary to  move  the  most  stupid  of  reactionaries.  Just 
as  soon  as  the  proponents  of  industrial  education 
were  able  to  show  the  manufacturer  he  was  losing 
trade  in  world  markets  because  of  poorly-trained 
workmen,  the  manufacturer  was  willing  to  listen  to 
what  was  urged  in  behalf  of  industrial  education. 
It  did  not  require  the  pronouncement  of  a  German 


1  What  Knowledge  Is  of  Most  Worth  in  Education,  D.  Ap> 
pleton  &  Co.,  1866,  p.  47. 


62  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

commission  that  America  was  not  to  be  feared  as  a 
world  competitor  so  long  as  its  workmen  were 
trained  by  empirical  methods;  the  secret  of  German 
ascendency  in  world  markets  properly  was  attrib- 
uted to  its  elaborate  scheme  of  industrial  education 
sustained  by  the  German  state.  Thus  was  the  man- 
ufacturer arrayed  on  the  side  of  industrial  education 
in  this  country.  Thus  did  the  consciousness  of  his 
own  shortsightedness  break  through  the  crust  of 
prejudice  and  ignorance.  Since  the  beginning  of 
the  present  war  the  world  has  learned  to  its  very 
great  surprise  how  very  far  scientific  concern  for 
industry  has  emancipated  Germany  from  any  de- 
pendence economically  upon  the  rest  of  the  world. 
The  present  needs  of  industry,  viewed  in  their 
economic  aspects,  and  from  that  point  of  view  only, 
may  be  thus  summarized : 

I.  A  greater  investment  of  labor  or  skill  in  the 
finished  product  of  industry. 

II.  Right  relationship  between  employers  and 
employees,  which  involves  a  cooperative  effort  by 
employer  and  employee. 

III.  Relief  of  the  workers  from  monotonous 
employment  as  far  as  relief  is  possible. 

IV.  Reduction  of  the  hazard  of  industrial  em- 
ployment by  several  methods,  chief  of  which  is  the 
education  of  employers  and  employees  in  accident 
prevention  and  to  the  point  of  view  that  industrial 
accidents  are  wasteful. 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS         63 

V.  An  educational  system  that  will  develop 
gumption,  initiative,  independence,  patience,  imag- 
ination, invention  and  self-reliance  and  eliminate 
awkwardness  among  workers. 

VI.  A  thorough  sugsgpjoi  our  whole  industrial 
system  that  will'  determine  the  social  value  of  each 
industry  and  fix  the  recognition  to  be  accorded  it 
as  a  social  factor. 

"We  are  twenty-five  years  behind  most  of  the 
nations  that  we  recognize  as  competitors,"  says  the 
report  of  the  committee  of  the  National  Association 
of  Manufacturers  on  Industrial  Education,  made  in 
1912.2  "We  must  come  nearer  to  the  level  of  inter- 
national competition.  As  every  manufacturing 
establishment  must  have  a  first-class  mechanical 
equipment  and  management,  so  also  it  must  have  in 
its  workmen  skill  equal  to. that  of  competitors,  do- 
mestic or  foreign.  The  native  ability,  the  intuitive 
insight,  courage  and  resourcefulness  of  American 
workmen  is  quite  unsurpassed.  They  are  the  broth- 
ers of  the  'men  behind  the  guns.'  It  is  their  mis- 
fortune that  they  have  not  been  given  by  their  coun- 
try that  measure  of  technical  instruction  that  is  their 
due,  and  are  by  no  means  equal  in  technical  skill  to 
the  workers  of  continental  Europe.     .     .     . 

"Providence  has  been  kind  to  us;  but  Providence 
is  likely  now  to  leave  us  a  little  more  to  our  own 
intelligence.  We  must  henceforth  sell  more  brains 
and  less  raw  material.     We  must,  to  the  utmost 


2  Report  of  Committee  on  Industrial  Education,  at  Seven- 
teenth Annual  Convention,  New  York  City,  May  21,  1912; 
iH.  E.  Miles,  Chairman  of  the  Committee. 


64  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

degree,  develop  our  human  efficiencies.  In  them  is 
a  natural  resource,  and  the  only  one  that  increases 
with  use  and  will  increase  forever  and  immeasur- 
ably. Other  nations,  lacking  our  raw  materials, 
make  the  cultivation  of  their  human  resources  the 
substantial  basis  of  their  prosperity  and  happiness.' ' 

So  long  as  our  natural  resources  appeared  inex- 
haustible— and  they  did  so  appear  until  compara- 
tively recent  years — our  industrial  development, 
such  as  it  was,  quite  reasonably  centered  about  the 
exploitation  of  these  resources.  Moreover,  railroad 
building  on  a  gigantic  scale  facilitated  the  exploita- 
tion of  bulky  crude  products  of  the  earth.  Ameri- 
cans might  make  handsome  profits  from  the  sale  of 
crude  pig  iron,  ywhich  Germany  bought  of  us  and  to 
which  Germany  added  the  patient  experimentation 
of  its  chemists  and  the  skill  of  its  artisans.  So  long 
as  crude  iron^ore  appeared  inexhaustible  we  were 
willing  to  accept  our  profits  from  mining,  and  per- 
haps the  simple  processes  of  reduction,  and  to  pay 
back  to  Germany  fifty  or  one  hundred  times  the 
value  of  the  original  raw  product,  which  represented 
Germany's  investment  of  intelligence  and  skill  in  the 
finished  product. 

Recently  we  have  been  taking  an  inventory  of 
our  natural  resources.  We  have  found  a  stock  we 
had  believed  inexhaustible  to  be  sadly  depleted.  It 
is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that  we  have  agreed 
upon  a  policy  of  conservation — a  strange  word  with 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         65 

new  meaning  each  season.  We  have  determined  to 
pursue  the  policy  of  our  most  successful  competitor, 
and  we  likewise  are  generally  agreed  that  the  same 
end  must  be  attained  by  the  same  means ;  that  is,  by 
industrial  education. 

Perhaps  our  industrial  atmosphere  has  been  ob- 
scured by  a  few  epochal  inventions — the  steamboat, 
electric  telegraph  and  telephone,  the  reaper  and  the 
sewing-machine.  Perhaps  our  self-complacency, 
our  national  conceit,  was  founded  upon  the  admitted 
transformation  wrought  by  these  inventions.  Yet 
these  inventions  were  no  more  useful  to  us  in  the 
exploitation  of  our  resources  than  to  Germany  and 
England  in  getting  our  raw  products  cheaply  for 
manufacture  into  finished  articles.  We  are  still 
accredited  with  the  manufacture  of  superior  agri- 
cultural implements  and  superior  sewing-machines, 
but  here  the  story  ends.  v 

The  fact  still  remains  that  the  value  added  in  the 
manufacture  of  raw  products  in  this  country  is  only 
two-thirds  of  the  value  of  raw  products  used;  that 
is,  for  every  three  dollars'  .value  of  raw  products 
we  add  two  dollars'  value  by  manufacture.  By  in- 
telligence and  skill  Germany  adds  to  the  value  of  the 
raw  product  another  value  which  is  two  and  two- 
thirds  times  the  original  value.  In  other  words,  for 
every  three  dollars  of  original  value  in  raw  products 
Germany  adds  eight  additional  dollars'  value  in  the 
process  of  manufacture, 


66  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Our  mistaken  notion  that  our  raw  products  were 
inexhaustible,  and  the  further  fact  that  a  satisfac- 
tory profit  could  be  obtained  from  the  production  of 
raw  material,  are  partially  responsible  for  the  pres- 
ent chaotic  state  of  industry.  Another  fact  is  also 
painfully  apparent.  We  have  not  possessed  the 
skilled  labor  with  which  to  perform  the  finer  proc- 
esses of  industrial  art. 

Not  only  do  we  suffer  great  loss  from  incomplete 
production,  due  to  want  of  skill,  but  our  processes 
are  inefficient  and  wasteful.  Until  quite  recently 
we  paid  little  or  no  attention  to  the  human  methods 
in  industry  and  there  was  little  experimentation  for 
correct  standards.  Men  were  assigned  to  this  ma- 
chine or  that  machine,  this  process  or  that  process, 
and  left  to  toil  without  any  well-determined  notion 
of  how  the  volume  of  their  output  would  balance 
with  the  output  of  other  men  operating  other  ma- 
chines or  engaged  in  other  processes.  Accurate  data 
for  fair  standards  were  not  available.  There  was 
little  information  at  hand  to  indicate  whether  indi- 
vidual workmen  were  efficient;  whether  they  were 
performing  their  tasks  by  the  shortest  cuts  possible. 

Germany  has  won  many  trade  battles  in  her  in- 
dustrial laboratories.  Everything  possible  is  done 
to  eliminate  waste  in  manufacturing  processes.  An 
institute  for  coal-mining  research,  designed  to  work 
out  processes  for  saving  all  the  by-products,  such 
as  ammonia  and  coal  tar,  and  thereby  reducing  the 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         67 

cost  of  fuel,  has  just  been  opened  in  that  country. 
It  is  only  one  of  the  many  similar  institutes  for 
scientific  research  which  give  expert  advice  to  every 
department  of  industry. 

Training  for  industry,  if  it  realizes  the  purposes 
of  its  proponents,  will  make  of  every  worker, 
grounded  in  the  science  of  industrial  production,  an 
experimenter  for  improved  methods  and  new  ways. 
It  offers  an  opportunity  to  widen  the  sources  of 
industrial  research  by  making  every  man  a  research 
student  instead  of  a  devitalized  and  de-energized 
automaton.  It  will  democratize  the  industrial  lab- 
oratory and  open  the  door,  heretofore  to  be  entered 
by  a  mere  handful  of  men,  to  the  many.  The  Na- 
tional Cash  Register  is  the  product  not  of  a  single 
genius,  but  of  hundreds  of  men  employed  in  the 
factory,  who  have  for  the  promise  of  substantial 
reward  devoted  themselves  to  the  improvement  of 
each  and  every  part.  Industrial  education  will  uni- 
versalize the  methods  by  which  one  company  has 
produced  a  cash  register  that  has  no  equal  on  the 
market. 

Until  recent  years  the  trade  union  system  of  ap- 
prenticeship was  our  sole  source  of  skilled  mechan- 
ics. But  apprenticeship  had  its  origin  and  served  its 
purpose  in  an  industrial  order  altogether  different 
from  that  now  prevailing.  Apprenticeship  does  not 
meet  the  present  needs  of  industry.  As  a  scheme  of 
education  it  is  altogether  inadequate.    Conditions  of 


68  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

society  have  changed  greatly.  Formerly,  the  master 
was  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the  apprentice, 
who  lived  with  him,  ate  at  his  table  and  perhaps 
subsequently  married  his  daughter.  The  master  felt 
a  personal  responsibility  for  the  character  of  the 
apprentice's  training,  the  perfection  of  his  skill. 

But  the  master  no  longer  works  with  his  men  and 
exercises  no  personal  supervision  over  his  appren- 
tice, who  is  merely  a  hired  boy  and  who  must  de- 
pend for  his  training  upon  what  he  may  gain  by 
observation.  No  one  is  present  to  direct  the  inquir- 
ing energies  of  his  youthful  mind.  The  boss  or 
foreman  is  likely  to  be  interested  solely  in  volume 
of  production  and  does  not  have  time  to  look  after 
the  training  of  the  young  man  seeking  to  learn  a 
trade.  Moreover,  the  system  of  apprenticeship  has 
operated  to  reduce  the  available  supply  of  skilled 
workmen  of  whatever  degree,  since  entrance  into  a 
trade  is  almost  as  difficult  as  opportunities  are 
meager.  But  trade  union  leaders  were  prone  to  de- 
fend the  apprenticeship  system  as  long  as  no  satis- 
factory substitute  was  offered. 

Many  large  corporations  maintain  private  trade 
schools  where  young  men  are  received  for  study  and 
training,  for  a  trade  or  for  some  department  of  the 
company's  business.  Their  work  has.  not  been 
altogether  satisfactory,  but  they  have  done  some- 
thing to  bridge  the  gap  between  inefficiency  and 
skill.     Their  failure  consists  fundamentally  in  the 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         69 

limitations  of  the  scheme.  Corporation  trade 
schools  educate  only  for  the  specific  concerns  which  / 
maintain  them  and  not  for  industrial  processes  gen- 
erally. Young  men  trained  in  the  narrow  ways  of 
a  particular  organization  are  apt  to  become  wholly 
dependent  upon  that  organization  and  to  believe  in 
the  permanence  and  infallibility  of  its  processes. 
Corporation  trade  schools  can  hardly  develop  the 
maximum  of  imagination  and  initiative — the  two 
very  important  attributes  of  efficiency  in  industry. 
Naturally,  the  trade  unions  opposed  the  corpora- 
tion trade  school.  A  special  committee  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,3  which  made  a 
report  on  industrial  education  at  the  Toronto  meet- 
ing in  1909,  opposed  corporation  trade  schools  on 
the  grounds  that,  since  their  selection  of  pupils  is 
private  and  not  public,  they  are  undemocratic  and 
un-American;  that  they  offer  an  opportunity  to 
teach  and  foster  anti-unionism  with  school-appren- 
ticed boys;  that  they  are  wholly  removed  from  the 
salutary  supervision  of  the  whole  people  and  leave 
unsolved  "the  fundamental  democratic  problem  of 
giving  the  boys  of  the  country  an  equal  opportunity 
and  the  citizens  the  power  to  criticize  and  reform 
their  educational  machinery" ;  that  they  merely  pre- 
tend to  teach  trades  "in  periods  ranging  from  four 


8  Proceedings  of  Twenty-ninth  Annual  Convention,  A.  F.  L., 
p.  101. 


70  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

months  to  four  years,  and  turn  out  graduates  in 
times  of  industrial  peace  who  are  able  to  earn  only 
fifty  per  cent,  of  the  established  wage  in  a  given 
trade,  and  in  times  of  industrial  dispute  are  ex- 
ploited in  the  interests  of  unfair  employers." 

But  this  committee  also  admitted  the  shortcom- 
ings of  the  apprentice  system.  "Formerly,  the  ap- 
prenticeship system  offered  the  boy  an  opportunity 
to  learn  a  trade  and  become  a  thoroughly  trained 
mechanic,"  it  found,  "but  of  late  years  the  scheme 
of  specialization  has  supplanted  the  old  apprentice- 
ship system,  even  to  extreme  specialization.  .  .  . 
The  one  trouble  in  America  to-day  is  that  too  many 
of  our  youths  who  have  graduated  from  the  gram- 
mar or  high  school  are  misfits  industrially.  If  we 
are  to  secure  industrial  supremacy,  or  even  maintain 
our  present  standards  in  the  industrial  world,  we 
must  in  some  way  in  our  educational  system  acquire 
an  equivalent  to  the  old  apprenticeship  system." 

Thus  the  influence  of  trade  unionism  in  the 
United  States  was  marshaled  on  the  side  of  indus- 
trial education,  if  provided  for  by  public  agency. 
This  victory  was  attained,  not  without  serious  ob- 
stacles, by  a  few  far-seeing  men  who  possessed  the 
confidence  of  organized  labor.  The  latter  element 
took  the  position  that  education  for  industry  must 
be  thorough,  and  to  be  thorough  must  be  under- 
taken at  public  expense.  It  must  be  made  a  part  of 
the  public  school  system.     On  this  basis  alone  was 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS        71 

organized  labor  willing  to  indorse  industrial  educa- 
tion as  supplemental  to  the  apprenticeship  system. 

There  are,  in  this  country,  several  types  of  trade 
schools — those  supported  by  public  funds,  those 
supported  by  private  foundations  and  those  sup- 
ported in  various  other  ways.  The  International 
Typographical  Union  established  a  school  of  print- 
ing in  1908.  A  number  of  technical  schools  are 
maintained  by  public  funds  and  an  even  larger  num- 
ber by  private  endowment.  Boston  and  Lowell  have 
maintained  evening  industrial  and  trade  schools  for 
many  years.  Many  such  schools  are  maintained 
privately.  Some  practical  shop  courses  are  publicly 
maintained  and  others  are  privately  endowed.  There 
are  trade  schools  for  the  colored  race  and  numerous 
private  correspondence  schools  offering  instruction 
at  long  range  for  industry.  One  correspondence 
school  claims  that  during  a  single  year  five  thousand 
of  its  students  received  wage  increases,  averaging 
four  hundred  dollars  for  each  student,  due  to  train- 
ing received  by  correspondence.  Finally,  there  are 
numerous  intermediate  industrial,  preparatory  trade 
or  vocational  schools,  among  which  are  those  at 
New  Bedford,  Lawrence  and  Newton,  Massa- 
chusetts, conducted  in  accordance  with  a  Massachu- 
setts statute  of  1906,  and  several  in  New  York, 
conducted  under  a  New  York  act  of  1908.  Many 
other  states  have  made  substantial  progress  toward 
establishing  and  maintaining  industrial  schools. 


/ 


72  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Some  means  must  be  devised  by  which,  for  the 
wide-spread  unrest  now  prevailing  in  industry,  a 
spirit  of  cooperation  and  mutuality  will  be  substi- 
tuted. Industrial  managers  are  agreed  that  this 
unrest  is  wasteful;  that,  whatever  its  causes,  unrest 
operates  to  reduce  efficiency,  not  only  in  the  produc- 
ing department,  but  in  the  departments  of  sales  and 
distribution.  Furthermore,  industrial  unrest  tends 
to  restrict  the  consumption  of  all  classes. 

There  is  a  fundamental  cause  of  industrial  unrest 
which  may  be  defined  as  the  uneven  division  between 
capital  and  labor,  employer  and  employee,  of  the 
products  or  fruits  of  industry.  This  fundamental 
difference  is  expressed  in  divers  ways,  chief  of 
which  are  the  desire  of  the  workers  for  a  voice  in 
determining  the  conditions  under  which  they  are  to 
work,  revolt  against  arbitrary  dealings  with  indi- 
vidual working  men  and  the  spread  of  industrial  and 
trade  unionism  as  a  sequel  to  disastrous  and  wasting 
strikes. 

Infamous  conditions  patent  to  certain  industries 
must  be  removed.  These  conditions  not  only  are 
drawing  the  fire  of  the  social  crusader  but  they  are 
wasting  the  energies  of  the  industrial  manager. 
They  evidence  a  very  serious  breach  of  harmony  be- 
tween industry  and  the  workers  and  call  for  an  im- 
mediate readjustment.  It  should  be  unnecessary  for 
social  workers  to  strive  against  child  labor,  un- 
sanitary factories,  occupational  diseases,  long  hours 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS         73 

of  service,  the  toll  of  human  flesh  taken  by  industrial 
accidents,  irregular  employment  and  wages  which 
fall  below  a  living  minimum.  Fundamentally,  these 
conditions  are  social  evils  but  they  have  a  profound 
economic  significance  to  industry  and  they  ought  to 
be  eradicated.  Industry  largely  must  set  its  own 
house  aright.  "Herein  must  the  patient  minister 
unto  himself."  No  one  manufacturer  can  accom- 
plish the  revolution  but  all,  working  together,  can 
do  so  and  they  should  act  with  earnestness,  even 
despatch. 

It  may  be  said  that  these  conditions  are  irremedi- 
able; that  no  satisfactory  panacea  has  been  or  will 
be  devised.     This  contention  is  untrue.     Of  all  the 
ills  to  which  industry  is  heir,  that  of  irregular  un- 
employment undoubtedly  is  least  susceptible  to  a 
thoroughgoing  remedy.     Yet  unemployment  is  not 
at  all  hopeless.     When  men  and  women  are  more 
satisfactorily  trained  for  industry,  when  industrial 
surveys  have  set  forth  the  facts  regarding  the  op- 
portunity for  steady  employment  in  each  trade,  there   , 
will  no  longer  be  the  same  blind  choice — seasonal  / 
or  intermittent  trades  and  unemployment  will  be^ 
avoided  by  men  who  must  consider  the  permanency 
of  employment. 

It  is  characteristic  of  our  industrial  order  that 
we  have  over-emphasized  the  difference  in  impor- 
tance of  various  works.  Although  we  have  very 
much  to  say  about  the  "dignity  of  honest  labor," 


74  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

we  do  not  accord  to  manual  labor  the  social  value 
to  which  it  is  entitled.  That  is  because  we  are  still 
thinking  in  terms  of  an  individualistic  philosophy 
and  because  we  still  act  from  that  motif.  Actually, 
we  do  not  consider  the  value  of  manual  labor  as 
comparable  with  the  mental  efforts  of  the  the- 
ologian, the  lawyer  or  the  merchant.  We  harp  much 
about  the  want  of  efficiency  of  the  man  who  keeps 
our  streets  clean  and  consider  with  hypocritical 
seriousness  whether  we  are  getting  a  full  day's 
work  for  a  dollar  and  a  half,  yet  we  concede  to  the 
corporation  attorney,  who  is  paid  to  inform  his 
client  of  all  the  sharp  practises  by  which  the  state 
may  be  frustrated  in  its  endeavor  to  enforce  useful 
laws,  the  right  to  have  for  his  services  fifty  or  per- 
haps one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  And 
this  corporation  attorney  who  receives  his  fee  for 
knowing  how  to  evade  our  laws  and  for  so  instruct- 
ing his  client  is  the  same  man  to  whom  perhaps  the 
state  has  given  a  professional  education — a  voca- 
tional education — in  our  state  universities,  at  great 
expense  to  all  the  people. 

We  can  not  escape  the  consequences  of  our  ideal- 
ism or  lack  of  it.  As  long  as  the  dollar  is  the  de- 
termining standard  of  successful  careers,  the  toiler 
who  labors  for  meager  wages  will  remain  at  the 
foot  of  the  social  ladder.  He  can  not  rise  above  it. 
Perhaps  there  is  no  panacea  for  this  condition.  Per- 
haps industry  is  not  to  be  held  accountable  for  the 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS         75 

cataclysmic  peril  of  individualism  run  riot,  but  in- 
dustrial education  will  free  the  workers  from  the 
enticements  of  "blind  alley"  jobs,  facilitate  the 
realization  of  an  economic  democracy  and  in  the  end 
raze  the  bulwarks  of  class  exploitation,  an  ideal 
from  which  industry  certainly  is  not  to  emerge  a 
loser. 

Cooperation  between  employer  and  employee,  as 
the  ultimate  goal  of  industry,  can  not  be  attained 
by  temporizing  devices  conceived  by  ultra-enthusi- 
astic philanthropists  or  fomented  by  irresponsible 
agitators.  Cooperation  is  a  scientific  fact  and  its 
approach  likewise  is  scientific.  It  must  be  realized 
by  and  through  the  efforts  of  the  student.  Indus- 
trial education,  therefore,  must  include  the  prob- 
lems of  cooperation  as  one  of  its  chief  concerns. 

Industry  needs  to  find  some  form  of  relief  from 
the  exactions  of  monotonous  employment.  There 
are  in  this  country  upward  of  twenty  million  people 
over  ten  years  of  age — men,  women  and  children — 
engaged  in  unskilled  or  partially-skilled  occupations. 
The  number  doing  this  unskilled  or  highly  special- 
ized work  remains  fairly  constant,  and  increases 
in  about  the  same  ratio  as  the  increase  in  popula- 
tion. The  service  is  menial,  monotonous,  automatic. 
Little  training  is  required  for  such  work  and  not 
more  than  a  few  months*  experience.  The  school 
seems  totally  unable  to  contribute  anything  to  the 
betterment  of  such  workers  as  long  as  they  remain 


76  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

in  these  unskilled  or  partially-skilled  occupations. 
Tacitly,  we  recognize  in  this  country  the  necessity 
for  the  industrial  worker  to  proceed  out  of  hand 
toil,  by  promotion,  to  positions  as  foremen,  man- 
ager, director  and  owner,  if  he  is  to  enjoy  the 
greater  social  luxuries.  He  can  obtain  few  luxuries 
as  long  as  he  remains  an  industrial  worker  because 
custom  has  fixed  a  limit  to  what  he  may  receive. 
We  are  beset,  therefore,  with  the  alternative  either 
of  considering  monotonous  employment  in  special- 
ized industries  or  the  hand  trades  as  the  beginning 
of  a  man's  promotion  to  a  managing  position  where 
he  may  earn  enough  to  support  himself  and  family 
in  comfort  and  save  against  old  age  and  diminished 
earning  capacity,  or,  of  admitting  that  this  class 
of  labor  is  underpaid. 

If  the  man  who  yesterday  performed  the  auto- 
matic tasks  of  industry  to-day  has  been  raised  to 
the  position  of  foreman  or  superintendent  or  sales 
manager,  some  one  takes  his  place.  That  one  man 
has  been  promoted  does  not  reduce  the  number  of 
men  required  for  the  commoner  kind  of  labor,  which 
the  promoted  man  performed  a  little  while  ago. 

Only  one  out  of  ten  boys  entering  the  textile  mill, 
it  is  said,  can  expect  to  rise  out  of  the  wearisome 
niche  of  automatic  effort  into  more  highly  skilled 
work  and,  as  for  girls,  the  percentage  is  much 
smaller.  Only  one  in  two  hundred  girls  employed 
in  the  simple  automatic  processes  of  the  textile  mill 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS         77 


may  expect  a  permanent  and  lucrative  position,  of- 
fering constant  opportunity  for  individual  effort  at 
greater  efficiency  and  promotion,  higher  wages  and 
better  working  conditions. 

Of  course,  boys  and  girls  must  be  educated  away 
from  these  "blind  alley"  occupations.  Girls  are  em- 
ployed on  an  average  of  seven  years  in  these  trades, 
after  which  they  marry  or  leave  for  other  causes. 
But  boys  must  continue  to  be  wage-earners  all  their 
lives,  and  the  pressure  of  their  permanent  welfare 
makes  the  problem  more  acute.  Charles  A.  Prosser 
suggests  the  machine  shops,  repair  shops,  electrical 
shops,  wheelwrighting  and  power  shops  which  clus- 
ter about  the  textile  center  as  desirable  openings  for 
boys  fitted  for  advancement  and  as  well  situated  for 
their  part-time  training  while  they  are  working 
actively  in  the  textile  industry. 

Mining  practically  is  devoid  of  opportunities  for 
promotion.  It  offers  little  inspiration  for  more  than 
average  effort  and  scarcely  any  chance  for  individ- 
ual skill.  Yet  there  are  many  hand  trades  necessary 
to  mining  operations  and  open  to  young  men  work- 
ing in  a  mine  through  which  they  may  find,  if  they 
choose,  a  "place  in  the  sun." 

Girls  who  perform  monotonous  tasks  may  take 
up  household  science  as  a  wholesome  diversion  and 
in  it  may  find  many  opportunities  to  increase  their 
earnings  or  prepare  for  the  business  of  home-mak- 
ing, which  eventually  is  their  chief  interest. 


78  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

Large-scale  production,  with  its  finely-spun  divi- 
sion of  labor,  depending  upon  specialized  machines 
run  at  high  speed,  where  increased  profits  are  closely 
related  to  greater  mental  and  physical  fatigue  of 
the  workers,  is  a  problem  which  industry  must 
attack  for  its  own  sake.  Monotonous  employment 
tends  to  restrict  the  activity  of  motor  centers  to  a 
few  grooves  and  in  that  much,  during  leisure  hours, 
calls  for  a  variety  of  experiences  that  may  become 
more  and  more  physically  and  morally  harmful. 
Shorter  hours  will  tend  to  relieve  the  strain,  but 
some  means  ought  to  be  provided  by  which  the 
worker  will  find  a  wholesome  avenue  of  expression 
in  his  leisure  hours. 

Industry  should  take  the  initiative  and,  in  a  large 
measure,  direct  the  course  which  public  agencies  are 
to  take  in  providing  healthful  and  diverting  systems 
of  recreation  for  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls, 
engaged  in  monotonous  employments.  Here  is  an 
opportunity  for  trained  social  workers,  but  every 
agency,  public  and  private,  must  cooperate  to  re- 
lieve the  tension  of  toil  where  "efficiency"  concerns 
itself  merely  with  speeding  up  the  physical  efforts 
of  the  worker. 

Perhaps  industrial  education  will  fail  to  contrib- 
ute materially  to  the  relief  of  the  workers  from 
automatic  industry.  Perhaps  automatic  industry  is 
not  susceptible  to  thoroughgoing  relief.  Yet  the 
problem  is  certain  to  be  attacked  as  a  consequence 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         79 

of  the  somewhat  universal  interest  in  industrial  edu- 
cation, and  may  we  not  expect  that  a  scientific  con- 
sideration of  its  troublesome  features  will  yield  a 
satisfactory  return  for  the  effort? 

An  almost  crucial  need  of  industry  is  the  training 
for  accident  prevention.  Employers  should  be  made 
to  see  that  accidents  are  wasteful;  that  they  affect 
the  credit  side  of  the  ledger ;  that  loss  of  life,  perma- 
nent or  even  temporary  illness  or  injury  of  em- 
ployees cost  dollars,  not  only  in  the  pay-roll,  but  in 
the  net  outlay  for  production. 

Frederick  L.  Hoffman4  estimated  the  number  of 
fatal  accidents  in  industry  in  1906  at  32,004,  while 
Doctor  Josiah  Strong,  in  his  Safety  and  Security  of 
American  Life  and  Labor,5  asserts  that  "our  peace- 
ful vocations  cost  more  lives  every  two  days  than 
all  we  lost  in  battle  during  our  war  with  Spain." 

Doctor  Tolman  gives  even  more  startling  figures 
in  his  volume,  Safety,  issued  in  1913.  "It  is  the 
general  opinion  of  the  engineering  profession,,,  he 
says,6  "that  one-half  of  the  accidents  in  the  United 
States  are  preventable  and  that  a  conservative  esti- 
mate of  the  annual  number  of  accidents  which  result 
fatally  or  in  partial  or  total  incapacity  on  the  part 
of  the  worker  may  be  placed  at  500,000.  Reckon- 
ing the  earning  capacity  of  the  average  worker  at 


*  Bliss,  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,  p.  4. 

B  Quoted  in  Bliss,  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,  p.  6. 

*Ibid.,  p.  2. 


80  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

$500  per  annum,  we  have  to  consider  a  social  and 
economic  loss  of  $250,000,000  a  year.  And  these 
figures,  of  course,  take  n6  account  of  the  many  high- 
salaried  men  and  industrialists  killed  every  year  in 
mining,  building,  transportation  and  other  fields  of 
industry. 

"Every  year,"  he  continues,7  "we  spend  enormous 
sums  'conserving  the  national  resources.'  We  are 
taking  care  of  our  trees,  we  are  taking  care  of  our 
game,  we  are  taking  care  of  our  fish,  but  also  every 
year  we  lose  many  times  over  what  we  conserve  in 
this  way  simply  because  an  army  of  wage-earners 
are  allowed  to  become  a  charge  on  charity  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  we  do  not  seem  to  consider 
it  worth  while  to  take  care  of  the  very  foundation  of 
the  nation — the  workingman  and  his  family.  .  .  . 
In  this  last  and  most -vital  question  of  all — the 
wasted  lives  of  our  people — we  have  been  making 
ourselves  ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  world  powers." 

As  a  contrast  with  the  reckless  extravagance  that 
prevails  in  this  country,  Tolman  cites8  the  statement 
of  Doctor  Zacher,  director  of  the  German  Imperial 
Bureau  of  Statistics : 

"One  billion  marks  in  wage-earning  efficiency  an- 
nually we  conserve  for  Germany  through  our  sana- 
toria, museums  of  safety,  convalescent  homes  and 
other  forms  of  social  insurance,  by  which  we  safe- 


7  Bliss,  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,  p.  4. 
*Ibid.t  p.  4. 


INDUSTRY    AND    ITS    NEEDS         81 

guard  the  lives  and  limbs  of  our  workmen  and  pre- 
vent the  causes  and  effects  of  diseases  which  would 
lessen  their  economic  efficiency." 

"One  of  the  most  important  phases  of  our  future 
development,"  says  Doctor  Tolman,9  "is  the  work 
of  creating  an  inexpensive  efficient  handrail  at  the 
top  of  our  industrial  precipice  to  take  the  place  of 
the  unreliable  and  expensive  ambulance  at  the  bot- 
tom." • 

It  is  not  sufficient  either  to  install  every  available 
device  for  the  safety  of  industry  or  to  say  simply 
that  workmen  must  be  careful.  It  will  hardly  suffice 
to  do  both.  Workmen  need  to  -be  trained  over  an 
extended  period  to  be  cautious.  Industrial  educa- 
tion "orrers  an  adequate  means  of  developing  those 
reflex  centers  which,  after  all,  are  the  surest  personal 
safeguards  and  guarantees  against  industrial  peril, 
while  the  mind  is  plastic.  ' 

Surely  there  can  be  no  question  that  accident  pre- 
vention should  be  undertaken  with  systematic  pre- 
cision when  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  in 
seven  yEars  has  been  able  to  reduce  industrial  acci- 
dents forty-six  per  cent,  and  save  nine  thousand  em- 
ployees from  serious  injury  or  death  as  a  result  of 
its  "safety  first"  ^movement  and  when  many  large 
concerns  have  been  able  to  .reduce  accidents  from 
thirty  to  eighty-five  per  cent,  without  any  loss  of 


•rbid.,p.8. 


82  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

production.  Industrial  education  should  emphasize 
the  economy  of  industrial  safety. 

Industry,  it  has  been  said,  is  in  need  of  an  educa- 
tional system  that  will  develop  imagination,  initia- 
tive, independence  and  self-reliance  among  the  men 
who  are  to  pursue  its  ramifications.  As  now  con- 
stituted, our  educational  system  is  wholly  unequal 
to  the  program  fixed,  for  ik.  It  is  quite  lacking  in 
impetus  for  individual  expression.  It  contributes 
little  to  promote  our  industrial  growth  because  it 
does  not  concern  itself  specifically  with  industrial 
problems. 

Industrial  education  aims  to  grasp  the  intricate 
and  inexplicable  phases  of  secondary  production  and 
to  give  to  each,  in  turn,  the  careful  attention  of  an 
army  of  trained  workers.  Production,  it  insists, 
must  be  complete  and  final.  Skill  of  the  highest 
order  should  attach  to  every  commodity  offered  for 
sale.  Production  seeks  the  minimum  cost,  and  this 
necessitates,  first,  that  employer  and  employee  be 
on  friendly  terms,  and,  second,  that  there  be  no 
sweating  and  no  unnecessary  monotony  in  industrial 
operation. 

Our  present  system  neglects  almost  altogether  the 
teaching  of  those  things  which  have  an  economic 
object.  Industry  is  no  exception.  Even  our  indus- 
trial history,  which  might  well  be  taught  under  the 
present  scheme  of  education,  is  slighted  or  wholly 
omitted.    The  information  of  the  average  boy  out 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS        83 

of  high  school  concerning  our  industrial  develop- 
ment is  confined  almost  altogether  to  vague  recollec- 
tions of  who  invented  the  steamboat,  the  cotton-gin, 
the  electric  telephone  and  telegraph.  There  it  ends. 
He  knows  almost  nothing  about  the  history  of 
machine  production,  of  the  labor  movement,  about 
science  as  applied  to  industrial  development,  about 
trade  and  transportation,  selling  and  marketing. 

Lawyers,  soldiers,  politicians  and  authors  occupy 
the  center  of  the  stage  in  the  schoolroom  panorama 
of  American  history.  Boys  and  girls  naturally  seek 
to  imitate  the  figures  constantly  held  before  their 
immature  minds.  Yet  what  does  it  profit  the  young 
man  or  young  woman  who  must  be  self-supporting 
at  sixteen  or  eighteen  years  of  age  to  emulate  such 
as  these  ?  Would  it  not  be  far  better  for  the  young 
man  who  must  go  to  work  very  early  in  life  that  the 
industrial  genius  of  Robert  Owen,  James  Parton, 
Cyrus  McCormick  or  Edison  were  emphasized 
somewhat  to  the  exclusion  of  political  and  military 
heroes?  Would  it  not  be  far  better  for  industry  if 
such  were  the  case? 

"Both  the  educational  methods  and  the  economic 
demand  have  been  crystallized,"  says  Howell 
Cheney,10  "and  a  solution  of  the  problem  satisfac- 
tory to  all  parties  depends  upon  keeping  a  proper 
balance  between  a  broad  training  for  life  and  imme- 


10  The  School  and  the  Shop  from  an  Employer's  Point  of 
View,  p.  4,  by  Howell  Cheney  of  Cheney  Brothers,  South 
Manchester,  Conn. 


84  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

diate  efficiency,  i.  e.,  between  the  social  and  educa- 
tional necessities  and  the  cultivation  of  a  mere 
dexterity  which  will  produce  the  greatest  number  of 
an  article  at  a  minimum  price." 

But  American  employers,  before  they  should  re- 
ceive the  aid  of  public  education  for  the  thorough 
training  of  young  men  and  women  for  industry 
must,  as  Howell  Cheney11  says,  "demonstrate,  first, 
the  existence  of  educational  opportunities  in  our 
factories  and  the  reality  of  their  influence,  and  then 
to  indicate  how  they  may  be  directed  toward  the 
promotion  of  higher  intelligence,  as  their  important 
aim.  Their  economic  value  is  of  secondary  impor- 
tance and  ought  to  be  considered  only  in  so  far  as  it 
contributed  toward  the  main  purpose." 

Cheney  contends  that,  after  eliminating  industries 
which  require  a  high  grade  of  skill  developed 
through  hard  work  and  which  are  plainly  educa- 
tional, there  are  many  others  which  offer  proper 
opportunities  for  industrial  training  for  boys  as  a 
legitimate  part  of  their  education.  Among  these  he 
names  the  metal  and  machine  trades,  from  making 
watches  to  building  locomotives ;  the  building  trades 
and  allied  vocations;  the  craft  of  the  bookbinder, 
printer,  decorator,  designer,  engraver  or  draftsman; 
the  higher  processes  of  shoe  and  textile  manufactur- 
ing; electrical  working,  agriculture,  dairy  farming, 
stock  raising  and  the  commercial  pursuits.    AntTfor 

11  Howell  Cheney,  The  School  and  The  Shop. 


INDUSTRY   AND   ITS    NEEDS        85 

girls,  Cheney  names  typewriting  and  stenography, 
millinery  and  dressmaking,  decorating,  designing 
and  printing  and  certain  machine  operations. 

But  these  occupations  are  only  typical.  Every 
one  needs  to  be  subjected  to  rigid  examination  and 
investigation  before  it  is  dignified  by  such  education 
and  training  as  the  public  schools  may  offer.  The 
schools  must  institute  and  carry  forward  to  comple- 
tion the  proposed  survey  of  industry.  So  far  little 
has  been  done.  "Our  schools/'  says  President  Eg- 
gleston,  of  the  Virginia  Polytechnic  Institute,  "are 
the  only  manufacturing  plants  in  the  world  that 
make  practically  no  survey  of  their  communities 
before  the  erection  of  plants." 

Nearly  ten  thousand  occupations  are  listed  in  the 
United  States  census  reports,  and  the  vast  work 
necessary  for  an  adequate  survey  of  industry  is 
apparent.  Many  occupations  which  are  not  now  ac- 
ceptable, as  offering  a  wholesome  minimum  of  edu- 
cational opportunity,  are  nevertheless  susceptible  to 
changes  which  will  make  them  acceptable.  Before 
any  occupation  is  made  a  part  of  the  industrial  edu- 
cational curriculum,  it  must  be  lifted  to  a  plane  where 
mental  development  is  assured  as  the  normal  result 
of  pursuing  its  processes.  There  must  be  no  "blind 
alleys"  into  which  young  men  and  women  are  to  be 
lureH  by  the  peculiar  enticements'  that  attach  to  a 
vocation  because  trainmg  for  it  may  be  had  in  pub- 
lic schools. 


86  .  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

As  expressed  by  Charles  H.  Winslow,12  an  indus- 
trial survey  should  determine  four  things:  First, 
the  exact  nature  of  the  employment  in  detail,  includ- 
ing the  character  of  work  performed;  second,  the 
extent  to  which  training  for  the  occupation  is  given 
in  the  shop,  that  school  instruction  may  supplement 
and  not  duplicate  practical  apprenticeship ;  tiiird,  a 
statement  of  the  common  deficiencies  and  needs  of 
the  worker,  and,  fourth,  the  nature  of  instruction 
expected  of  the  public  schools-. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  determination  of  these 
things  would  constitute  a  fairly  satisfactory  survey 
of  industry.  In  the  industrial  survey  of  Richmond 
detailed  schedules  of  fifty  inquiries  were  prepared, 
one  for  the  industrial  managers  and  one  for  the 
workmen.  In  the  printing,  building  and  metal 
trades,  for  instance,  more  than  five  Hundred  indi- 
vidual schedules  were  taken,  each  representing  a 
personal  conference  with  workmen.  One  hundred 
and  fifty  individual  schedules  were  taken  among  the 
workmen  in  the  tobacco  industry  and  three  or  four 
hundred  in  the  department  stores.  Analyses  for 
each  of  fifty-six  occupations  in  the  printing,  build- 
ing and  metal  trades  were  prepared. 

Necessarily,  a  survey  must  be  a  permanent  insti- 
tution in  order  to  carry  investigations  into  industries 
not  covered  by  the  initial  survey;  to*  collect  and 


"Address  on  Richmond  Survey. 


INDUSTRY   AND    ITS    NEEDS         S7C 

compile  data  regarding  new  processes  and  new 
occupations  in  industries  already  covered ;  to  collect 
data  concerning  the  development  of  new  industries 
in  a  community,  and  to  maintain  intimate  relation- 
ship between  shop  and  school.  For  the  success  of 
industrial  education  the  last  is  most  important.  Not 
only  should  the  relationship  between  shop  and  school 
be  permanent,  but  it  likewise  should  be  of  the  most 
intimate  and  friendly  sort.  For  this  purpose,  ex- 
perts, teachers  and  industrial  managers  should  be 
joined  together  permanently  to  effect  and  maintain 
the  cooperation  and  coordination  of  shop  and 
school.  The  coordination  should  be  characterized 
by  daily  contact  between  shop  and  school  through 
some  professional  intermediary  agent  that  is  able  to 
measure  and  report  progress.  No  other  means  can 
get  equally  efficient  results,  and  if,  as  Mr.  Winslow 
says,  "industrial  education  should  not  be  content  to 
follow,  it  should  direct  industrial  development ;"  no 
less  direct  means  of  coordination  will  insure  the 
fulfillment  of  the  aims  of  industrial  education. 

Industry  demands  the  cooperation  of  the  manu- 
facturer, the  workmen  and  the  teacher  to  deter- 
mine the  boundaries  of  industrial  education  and 
guide  its  course  aright.  Training  for  industry  is 
going  to  yield  readily  to  a  measuring  stick,  and  that 
measuring  stick  is  shop  efficiency.  But  if  industrial 
education  arouses  the  thought  centers  and  creates 


..88  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

new  grooves  and  paths  in  the  brains  of  working 
men,  efficiency  in  shop  and  factory,  under  the  proper 
guidance  of  skilled  managers  and  executives,  will 
take  care  of  itself.  Industry  will  thus  enter  a  new 
era  of  reformation  and  expansion. 


CHAPTER  V 

AGRICULTURE  AND  ITS  EDUCATIONAL   NEEDS 

Food  production  has  failed  to  keep  pace  with  the  increase  in 
population — Our  farm  yields  are  far  below  those  of  European 
countries — Farm  is  unattractive  as  a  business  opportunity- 
Distribution  facilities  are  inadequate — Greater  production  in 
the  aggregate  means  lower  prices — Cooperative  marketing  is 
a  scientific  undertaking  and  a  problem  for  trained  minds — 
Why  rural  education  is  uninteresting — Agricultural  colleges 
and  practical  farming — Keeping  the  boy  on  the  farm — The 
problems  of  tenantry,  transient  laborers  and  mature  workers 
— Agricultural  credit — Farm  accounting"— Diversified  farming 
— Expenditures  for  roads — Conservation  in  agriculture — Vi- 
sion and  inspiration  count — Careful  training  essential. 

The  farm  is  the  granary  for  the  office,  the  store 
and  the  shop.  It  is  the  farm  which  must  feed  and 
clothe  that  section  of  the  population  which  produces 
no  food  and  no  raw  material  for  clothing.  Prices 
of  food  and  clothing  have  experienced  an  upward 
trend  for  several  years  and  are  becoming  next  to 
prohibitive  for  great  sections  of  the  population.  The 
conclusion  is  obvious  that  production  must  be  in- 
creased if  the  non-producers  of  food  are  to  be  fed. 
It  is  very  generally  agreed  that  there  is  not  enough 
food  to  "go  around" ;  that  a  shortage  of  supply  has 
enhanced  prices  for  all  classes. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  the  volume 
of  farm  production  has  become  a  serious  social 

89 


90  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

problem  in  the  United  States.  The  urban  popula- 
tion has  been  gaining  on  the  rural  population  for 
thirty  years.  The  active  producers  have  been  leav- 
ing the  farm  for  the  city.  While  the  urban  popula- 
tion increased  from  29.5  per  cent,  of  the  whole  in 
1880  to  46.3  per  cent,  in  1910,  the  rural  population 
decreased  from  70.5  to  53.7.  The  effect  of  this 
shifting  of  population  upon  production  is  more 
clearly  evidenced  from  the  decrease  in  rural  popula- 
tion in  the  great  agricultural  states  of  the  Middle 
West  between  1880  and  1910.  The  table  herewith 
presented  shows  the  percentage  of  rural  population 
for  two  periods  in  twelve  states : 


Table  Showing  the  Rural  Population  by  Percentages  for 
Twelve  States  at  Two  Periods 


State 

1880 

1910 

State 

1880 

1910 

Indiana 

...  80.5 

57.6 

Iowa  

.  84.8 

69.4 

Ohio   

...  67.8 

44.1 

Missouri    

.  74.8 

57.5 

Illinois   

...  69.0 

38.3 

North  Dakota. 

.  92.7 

89.0 

Michigan  ... 

...  75.2 

52.8 

South  Dakota.. 

.  92.7 

86.9 

Wisconsin  . . 

...  76.1 

57.0 

Nebraska 

.  86.6 

73.9 

Minnesota  . . 

...  81.1 

59.0 

Kansas  

.  89.5 

70.8 

The  decrease  in  the  number  of  persons  engaged  in 
agriculture — the  number  of  food-producers — is 
striking.  Since  1880  there  has  been  a  steady  decline 
from  44.4  per  cent,  to  32.9  in  1910.  The  percentage 
of  professional  people  has  shown  a  slight  gain  and 
the  percentage  of  persons  in  domestic  and  personal 
service  a  considerable  falling  off — 5.2  per  cent. — in 
the  last  decade.    On  the  contrary,  the  percentage  of 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS         91 

persons  engaged  in  mechanical  and  manufacturing 
pursuits,  who  are  non-producers  of  the  raw  material 
for  food,  increased  from  21.8  in  1880  to  28.3  in 
1910. 

More  striking  still  is  the  deduction  from  these 
figures  that,  whereas  in  1880  there  was  44.4  per 
cent,  of  the  population  to  feed  a  remainder  of  55.6, 
in  1910  there  was  only  32.9  per  cent,  of  the  working 
population  to  feed  a  remainder  of  67.1  per  cent. 

Our  production  per  acre  is  still  far  behind  that  of 
the  great  European  agricultural  countries  where  the 
pressure  of  population  has  become  serious.  We 
produced  14.1  bushels  of  wheat  per  acre  in  the  ten- 
year  period,  1900-09,  while  Germany  produced  28.9 
bushels,  France  20.5  and  the  United  Kingdom  33. 
We  produced  29.3  bushels  of  oats,  while  Germany 
raised  50.7  and  the  United  Kingdom  44.3 ;  92  bush- 
els of  potatoes,  while  Germany  produced  200,  Aus- 
tria 151.1,  France  133.8  and  the  United  King- 
dom 193.8.1 


1The  following  table  shows  the  ten-year  yield  of  leading 
crops  in  seven  countries : 

Wheat  Oats  Barley    Rye  Potatoes 

Country  60  lbs.  32  lbs.  48  lbs.   56  lbs.    60  lbs. 

United  States  14.1  29.3  25.8       16.0         92.0 

European  Russia 9.7  20.0  14.3       11.5         99.0 

Germany    28.9  50.7  35.3       25.6       200.0 

Austria   18.0  29.8  26.3       19.0       151.1 

Hungary  17.5  30.7  23.4       17.6       118.7 

France  20.5  &  31.66  23.66     17.16    113.86 

United  Kingdom  33.16  44.3  6  35.0  6    27.5  6    193.8  6 

6— Winchester  bushels. 


92  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

By  improving  the  seed  and  by  proper  methods  of 
farming,  the  yield  of  wheat  and  corn  could  be 
doubled  in  this  country  and  the  yield  of  oats  and 
barley  increased  to  fifty  bushels.  Agriculture,  dur- 
ing the  last  three  decades,  has  very  little  for  which 
to  congratulate  itself  if  crop  yields  only  are  con- 
sidered. 

That  the  farm  has  not  been  attractive  as  a  busi- 
ness opportunity,  accounts  partially  for  the  move- 
ment from  country  to  city.  The  movement  is 
world-wide.  In  1897,  says  Mulhall,  when  forty  per 
cent,  of  the  world's  population  was  engaged  in  agri- 
culture and  thirty-one  per  cent,  of  the  world's  capital 
was  employed  in  this  industry,  its  share  of  the 
world's  profits  was  only  twenty  per  cent.  The  sig- 
nificance of  this  disparity  is  more  marked  in  the 
United  States  from  the  fact  that  land  values  jn  this 
country  and  cost  of  farm  equipment  have  increased 
enormously  in  the  last  decade. 

The  value  of  farm  property  in  the  United  States 
doubled  between  1900  and  1910,  and  more  than 
three- fourths  of  the  increased  value  was  for  land. 
While  the  man  who  owned  a  farm  in  1910  could  sell 
it  practically  for  twice  what  he  would  have  received 
in  1900,  if  he  chose  to  keep  the  farm  the  increased 
value  was  reflected  only  in  such  advances  as  attached 
to  prices  of  farm  products.  It  is  growing  increas- 
ingly difficult  for  the  young  man  starting  out  in  life 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS        93 

with  no  money  to  obtain  a  farm  of  his  own  because 
of  the  increased  initial  cost  of  the  land. 

Farmers  can  hardly  be  expected  to  wax  enthusi- 
astic over  increased  production  if  this  means  merely 
that  they  shall  receive  a  proportionately  smaller  unit 
price  for  a  greater  number  of  bushels;  or,  a  like 
number  of  coins  for  a  greater  number  of  pounds. 
After  all,  the  farmer's  economic  interest  is  centered 
in  increased  profits,  whether  production  recedes,  re- 
mains constant  or  is  enhanced.  If  only  the  eco- 
nomic interest  of  the  so-called  non-producers — the 
consumers  of  food  and  clothing — were  to  be  con- 
sidered, it  could  be  said  truly  thatf  greater  produc- 
tion would  solve  the  whole  problem  of  the  high  cost 
of  living^  Increased  production  would  amount  to  a 
greater  "supply,  and  under  normal  conditions,  at 
least,  this  factor  would  tend  to  reduce  prices  to  a 
proper  level. 

Unfortunately,  the  farmer's  economic  interest  in 
increased  profits  can  not  be  ignored.  Involved  in 
this  interest,  patent  to  the  farmer's  prosperity,  is  the 
problem  of  distribution,  which,  fortunately,  is  not 
altogether  hopeless.  The  problem  of  distribution  is 
no  other  than  that  of  markets.  ^So  that,  if  produc- 
tion is  increased,  improved  market  facilities  to  safe- 
guard the  farmer's  economic  interest  in  greater 
profits  must  eliminate  to  some  extent  the  present 
waste  in  distribution.  \  Present  and  future  efforts  to 


94  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

avoid  this  waste  must  compensate  the  farmer  for 
producing  larger  crops,  which,  otherwise,  would 
mean  nothing  to  him. 

The  two  most  important  economic  problems  of 
agriculture,  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  engaged 
in  the  industry,  therefore,  are£ greater  production 
and  improved  market  facilities^ 

Improved  market  facilities  must  go  hand  in  hand 
with  increased  production  if  the  economic  problems 
of  the  farm  are  to  be  solved.  The  country  is  quite 
familiar  with  "corners"  and  monopolies  of  food 
products ;  familiar  with  the  waste  from  our  indirect 
system  of  dealing  between  producer  and  consumer, 
and  from  total  loss  of  most  of  the  surplus  raised  on 
the  average  farm,  because  no  scheme  is  available  to 
expedite  barter  and  sale  directly  between  producer 
in  the  country  and  consumer  in  the  city;  familiar 
with  the  loss  from  glutted  markets,  where  the  pro- 
ducer must  take  what  the  commission  man  is  willing 
to  pay. 

The  packers  have  control  of  the  meat  supply, 
gamblers  in  futures  get  control  of  the  available  sup- 
ply of  wheat,  brokers  and  cold-storage  men  combine 
to  limit  the  free  trading  in  fruits,  eggs  and  dairy 
products,  while  prices  soar  beyond  all  reason.  Veg- 
etables in  large  quantities  go  to  waste  on  the  farm 
because  there  is  no  means  by  which  the  individual 
farmer  can  dispose  of  his  small  surplus.  The  farmer 
has  come  to  be  a  disinterested  spectator  in  make- 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS        95 

believe  rate  wars  between  shipper  and  carrier.  The 
whole  system  of  marketing  is  inefficient,  extrava- 
gant and  ruinous.  The  farmer  suffers  most  of  all 
from  the  havoc  wrought  by  this  inefficiency  and 
waste. 

"Year  after  year,"  says  John  Graham  Brooks,2 
"southern  California  tried  to  market  her  fruits  as 
if  the  process  were  an  all-around  free  fight.  From 
the  grower  to  the  eater  there  was  no  interest  which 
did  not  suffer.  The  separate  grower  found  himself 
with  less  and  less  influence  over  the  railroad,  over 
prices  and  over  far-off  commission  men." 

But  the  fruit  growers  found  a  remedy  for  this 
condition  in  cooperative  organization,  and  the 
power  formerly  used  by  the  middleman  has  been 
appropriated  directly  by  the  growers.  "What  or- 
ganization has  done  for  large  business,"  says 
Brooks,  "it  here  does  for  the  smaller.  Grading, 
packing,  inspection,  marketing  are  all  taken  into 
their  own  group  control.  ...  In  the  central 
exchange  and  the  forty  independent  co-operative 
associations  above  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  citrus  fruit 
is  thus  handled.  Three  out  of  four  of  California's 
twelve  thousand  growers  are  in  co-operative  team- 
work." 

Apple  growing  is  a  cooperative  enterprise  in  the 
Northwest.     Cooperation  has  effected  a  revolution 

.    3  The  New  Republic. 


96  LEARNING   TO   EARfsf 

in  dairying.  There  are  more  than  fifteen  hundred 
mutual  insurance  companies,  insuring  farmers 
against  losses  from  fire,  hail  and  cyclones,  and  all 
but  a  fraction  of  one  per  cent,  of  these  companies 
have  been  successful.  Five  of  the  thirteen  million 
acres  of  irrigated  land,  it  is  said,  have  been  irrigated 
by  cooperative  effort.  There  are  several  thousand 
farmers'  elevators  in  the  country  that  not  only  mar- 
ket the  members'  grain,  but  purchase  cooperatively 
flour,  coal,  lumber,  machinery  and  general  mer- 
chandise. 

The  cooperative  movement  has  spread  rapidly  in 
the  last  few  years  and  presents  an  effective  means  of 
checking  the  oppression  of  railroads,  middlemen  and 
other  monopolists. 

Agricultural  education  is  proposed  as  a  system  of 
training  by  which  farm  production  may  be  in- 
creased. It  is  expected  to  reveal  its  magic  in  making 
land  that  costs  twice  as  much  as  formerly  produce 
at  least  twice  as  much.  To  this  extent  it  is  expected 
to  make  the  farm  attractive  as  a  business  opportu- 
nity and  check  the  exodus  from  country  to  city, 
which,  incidentally,  has  more  than  economic  impor- 
tance. Moreover,  if  agricultural  education  accom- 
plishes a  reasonable  measure  of  its  program,  it  will 
develop  a  happy  and  contented  country  life,  one 
which  for  intelligence  and  vision  will  surpass  even 
the  competitive  spirit  of  life  in  the  great  industrial 
and  commercial  metropolis.    In  any  event,  country 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS        97 

life  will  avoid  the  most  glaring  vices  of  the  city. 
By  emphasizing  the  comparative  advantages  of  life 
in  the  open,  socially  and  financially,  agricultural  edu- 
cation should  establish  a  countryside  that  is  attrac- 
tive to  those  active-minded  young  men  now  hasten- 
ing, at  the  outset  of  their  careers,  to  the  office  in  the 
city.  Since  the  farmer's  markets  are  intimately 
dependent  upon  cooperative  endeavor,  agricultural 
education  is  expected  to  emphasize  the  importance 
of  cooperation  in  buying  and  selling.  Young  men 
must  be  trained  in  the  scientific  phases  of  cooper- 
ative endeavor,  and  agricultural  education  can  and 
should  give  this  training.  Cooperation  among  pro- 
ducers is  quite  as  necessary  to  the  consumers  as  to 
primary  producers. 

Were  it  not  well  settled  that  something  is  wrong 
with  rural  education,  we  should  have  nothing  new 
to-day  with  which  to  deal.  But  the  twin  problems 
of  an  imminent  shortage  of  food  supply  and  de- 
creasing profits  from  the  business  of  farming  have 
precipitated  what,  it  seems  certain,  will  amount  to  a 
revolution  in  rural  education.  Of  course,  there  has 
been  a  wide-spread  conviction  that  the  rural  schools 
somehow  have  not  fulfilled  the  needs  of  the  boys 
and  girls  who  come  to  them.  Discerning  parents 
have  been  unable  to  establish  any  close  relationship 
between  what  their  sons  and  daughters  learned  at 
school  and  what  they  ought  to  know  to  be  success- 
ful farmers  and  farmers'  wives. 


98  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Professional  educators  have  sought  to  correlate 
teaching  with  real  life  as  a  counter-irritant  to  this 
wide-spread  feeling.  It  was  admitted  that  peda- 
gogical instruction  lacked  concreteness,  failed  to 
hold  the  child's  interest,  and  teachers  therefore  were 
urged  to  use  the  concrete  material  available  in  the 
school  community.  Not  until  recently  was  the  rela- 
tionship between  the  failure  of  public  school  instruc- 
tion and  the  development  of  the  vocational  instincts 
in  children — a  development  which  vocational  educa- 
tion in  its  many  phases  is  to  satisfy — recognized. 

Rural  education  is  not  adapted  to  the  immediate 
and  intimate  interests  of  the  children.  Agricultural 
education  should  make  it  so. 

For  more  than  a  half  century  the  agricultural 
colleges  and,  for  a  lesser  period,  the  United  States 
Department  of  Agriculture  have  labored  with  the 
declared  purpose  of  awakening  a  scientific  interest 
in  the  business  of  farming.  The  agricultural  college 
and  the  extension  work  of  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  have  pointed  the  way  to 
better  methods  and  to  a  scientific  point  of  attack. 
This  cooperative  endeavor  may  be  regarded  as  the 
forerunner  of  what  we  know  to-day  as  the  nation- 
wide scheme  of  agricultural  education — a  scheme 
that  will  thoroughly  localize  instruction. 

Agricultural  education  purposes  to  transform  the 
rural  schools  so  that  they  will  accomplish  the  ends 
which  their  surroundings  invite  them  to  seek.    Agri- 


AGRICULTURE   AND   ITS   NEEDS        99 

cultural  colleges  have  made  no  little  progress  in 
demonstrating  that  intellectual  vision  and  mental 
activity  are  quite  as  necessary  to  successful  farming 
as  physical  energy,  but  the  impetus  for  the  present 
movement  did  not  come  from  the  land-grant  insti- 
tutions. 

The  agricultural  college  has  failed  largely  to  edu- 
cate practical  farmers.  Instead  of  educating  young 
men  for  the  farm,  the  agricultural  college,  as  well  as 
the  public  schools,  actually  has  educated  the  young 
man  away  from  the  farm.  Senator  Page  has  made 
the  statement  that  the  agricultural  college  of  Ver- 
mont in  thirty  years  furnished  just  eight  practical 
farmers.  In  twenty  years  the  Montana  Agricul- 
tural College ..iurnishedjwo.  These  examples  are 
hardly  typical,  but  the  tendency  of  the  agricultural 
college  has  been  to  make  its  students  agricultural  sci- 
entists rather  than  practical  and  successful  farmers. 

More  boys  should  remain  on  the  farm  and  their 
education  for  the  farm,  therefore,  should  be  ob- 
tained largely  in  the  home  community  if  there  is  to 
be  any  material  profit  from  agricultural  education, 
if  education  is  to  make  the  farm  attractive.  It  is 
wrong  altogether  to  send  the  boy  away  to  the  city 
for  an  agricultural  education  at  a  time  when  his 
mind  is  most  susceptible  to  the  influences  which  sur- 
round him.  The  new  movement  for  agricultural 
education  purposes  to  establish  the  agricultural 
school  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  farm,  where  it 


100  LEARNING  TO   EARN 

will  be  available  to  the  country  boy  without  leaving 
the  farm  at  all.  If  the  nation-wide  scheme  of  agri- 
cultural education  given  in  the  public  schools  of  each 
township  will  not  succeed  in  keeping  the  boy  on  the 
farm,  then  nothing  will  succeed. 

The  per  cent,  of  tenancy  in  the  United  States  in- 
creased from  25.5  in  1880  to  37  in  1910;  also,  the 
number  of  tenant  farmers  increased  130  per  cent, 
during  the  thirty-year  period,  while  the  number  of 
owned  farms  increased  only  34  per  cent.  The 
growth  of  tenancy  is  not  to  be  excused  or  condoned. 
It  is  not  a  healthful  sign  of  rural  life  and  must  be 
checked  if  the  American  farmer  is  to  realize  the 
ideals  of  an  industrial  democracy;  if  he  is  to  con- 
tribute his  share  toward  what  goes  to  make  up  an 
efficient  citizenship. 

There  are  in  the  United  States  upward  of  three 
million  transient  farm  laborers  whose  position  in 
rural  life  is  precarious,  to  say  the  least,  and  there 
are  perhaps  an  additional  million  of  young  men  who 
are  just  starting  life  on  the  farm.  All  of  these  are 
practically  beyond  the  reach  of  agricultural  educa- 
tion in  the  public  schools,  except  the  few  who  may 
be  reached  through  continuation  classes,  extension 
courses,  civic  societies  and  local  farmers'  organiza- 
tions. 

Very  little  may  be  accomplished  among  the  six 
and  one-half  million  farmers  living  on  their  own  or 
rented  land,  because  their  ways,  their  habits  of  do- 


AGRICULTURE   AND   ITS   NEEDS       101 

ing  things  or  of  failing  to  do  them  are  reasonably 
well  fixed.  They  do  not  respond  to  contact  with 
new  ideas.  They  are  not  susceptible  to  new  meth- 
ods. In  a  certain  Indiana  village  where  a  county 
agricultural  agent  had  organized  a  township  associa- 
tion of  farmers,  the  young  men  only  could  be  in- 
duced to  attend  the  meetings.  In  one  instance, 
twenty-two  out  of  twenty-five  present  were  under 
the  age  of  twenty-five.  Yet  the  subject  under  dis- 
cussion was  "smut  in  wheat,"  which  was  responsible 
for  heavy  damage  to  the  crop  just  harvested.  Agri- 
cultural extension  courses  and  short  courses  given 
each  winter  at  the  agricultural  colleges  may  do 
something  toward  reaching  matured  men  who  have 
not  lost  interest  in  new  methods,  but  they  are  wholly 
inadequate,  even  pedagogically  wrong,  as  applied  to 
boys  in  the  public  schools  whose  minds  are  fired  with 
curiosity  not  only  of  knowing  how  the  soil  is  to  be 
prepared  to  raise  better  crops,  but  of  knowing  why 
it  should  be  prepared  in  a  particular  way. 

The  propaganda  of  agricultural  education  is  de- 
signed primarily  for  the  million  boys  living  on  the 
farm  who  have  not  yet  left  the  public  schools  and 
the  millions  to  follow  them  who  will  receive  the  dis- 
closures of  scientific  experimentation  and  investiga- 
tion with  youthful  enthusiasm  and  adolescent  faith. 

Agricultural  education  is  not  to  be  merely  a  train- 
ing for  the  successful  production  of  corn,  wheat, 
cherries  and  sleek  cattle.    The  agricultural  extension 


102  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

courses  and  the  farmers*  short  courses  are  doing 
that  because,  probably,  it  is  the  best  that  may  be 
done  with  mature  men  who  have  not  the  time  and 
may  lack  the  inclination  to  delve  deeply  into  under- 
lying principles ;  who  may  be  past  the  age  of  learn- 
ing why  given  causes  produce  certain  effects.  Per- 
haps five  million  farmers  attend  institutes,  receive 
instruction  from  itinerant  specialists  and  other 
forms  of  institute  activity  each  year.  This  is  all 
very  well,  but  the  boy  in  the  public  schools  who  is 
being  educated  for  the  farm  must  know  more  than 
railroad  specials  and  institutes  are  able  to  give, 
and  the  schools  must  be  capable  of  developing  these 
underlying  principles.  He  must  know  enough  about 
the  chemistry  of  soils  to  understand  why  frequent 
cultivation  is  necessary  and  why  certain  plant  food 
is  required  for  given  crops.  This  is  the  scientific  or 
cultural  phase  of  education  for  the  farm,  and  the 
boy  will  do  well  to  get  this  cultural  foundation  in 
the  public  schools. 

Agricultural  credit  is  an  important  means  by 
which  production  may  be  increased.  The  farmer's 
money  is  not  available  at  a  time  when  it  is  most 
needed.  The  farmer  should  have  facilities  for 
financing  his  crop  at  the  beginning  of  the  season, 
and,  for  low  rates,  he  should  be  able  to  obtain  rea- 
sonable amounts  of  money  for  drainage,  for  feeding 
stock,  fencing  and  equipment.  Under  present  con- 
ditions he  must  pay  fabulous  rates  and,  for  these 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS       103 

purposes  it  is  difficult  to  obtain  at  all,  unless  he  hap- 
pens to  have  credit  apart  from  the  crop  just  about 
to  be  produced. 

Whatever  surplus  the  farmer  has  left  in  the  fall 
when  the  crops  are  harvested  is  deposited  in  the 
country  banks,  from  which  it  finds  its  way  to  the 
city  vaults  to  be  used  in  financing  industrial  enter- 
prise at  low  rates  and  where  the  element  of  security 
is  vastly  less  than  that  of  farm  investment.  This 
was  the  finding  of  President  Roosevelt's  Country 
Life  Commission  after  a  thorough  investigation  of 
banking  conditions.  A  report  of  the  controller  of 
the  currency  on  the  condition  of  national  banks  for 
one  period  in  1914  showed  that  out  of  $415,399,- 
620.64  on  deposit  in  the  national  banks  of  Indiana, 
Minnesota,  Iowa,  North  Dakota  and  S©uth  Dakota 
$198,570,605.39  was  in  time  deposits  and  not  sub- 
ject to  check.  A  good  part  of  this  money  goes  to 
reserve  cities  to  be  loaned  out  at  two  or  three  per 
cent.  The  farmer  should  be  able  to  maintain  inti- 
mate business  relationship  with  the  banker,  and  he 
ought  to  have  banking  facilities  equal  or  superior  to 
the  manager  of  industrial  enterprise. 

Legislatures  and  congresses  for  a  generation  have 
been  seeking  an  equitable  system  of  agricultural 
credit — cheap  interest  rates  for  the  farmer,  to  which 
he  is  entitled  by  virtue  of  the  stability  and  security 
of  his  investment.  Yet  the  sum  total  of  investiga- 
tion, discussion  and  debate  has  not  even  determined 


104  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

whether  it  is  expedient  for  the  federal  government 
or  the  states  separately  to  undertake  the  administra- 
tion of  a  credit  system.  If  a  system  is  ever  put  into 
operation,  it  must  be  effected  through  the  influence 
of  the  farmers  themselves,  and  it  remains  perhaps 
for  the  boys  who  are  to  be  educated  in  agricultural 
schools  to  devise  a  satisfactory  scheme  and  give  it 
the  sanction  of  law. 

Accurate  bookkeeping  should  determine  what  are 
the  profits  and  losses  of  the  farm,  and  annual  bal- 
ances should  serve  as  guides  for  the  succeeding  year. 
Few  farmers  are  able  to  tell  at  the  end  of  the  year 
how  much  money  they  have  made  and  many  are 
unable  to  tell  whether  their  business  is  being  run  at 
a  gain  or  loss.  No  large  business  could  survive  the 
want  of  trial  balances  and  no  business,  large  or 
small,  could  endure  if  it  were  run  as  most  men  man- 
age the  financial  department  of  the  farm.  Barn 
doors  and  tool  chests  are  quite  inadequate  for  the 
bookkeeping  of  the  farm.  Yet  perhaps  three- 
fourths  of  the  farmers  make  their  only  entries  in 
these  places.  Farmers  ought  to  know  how  to  segre- 
gate accounts  for  every  department  of  production, 
and  separate  accountings  must  show  the  losses  of 
raising  rye  as  well  as  the  profits  of  feeding  cattle 
ior  beef. 
/  Some  farmers  no  doubt  would  find,  if  their  books 
j  were  balanced  at  the  end  of  the  year,  that  they  could 
have  made  more  money  by  working  for  a  dollar  a 


AGRICULTURE  AND   ITS   NEEDS       105 

day  for  some  one  else.  Yet  it  would  take  a  careful 
balance  to  convince  them  of  their  losses.  Out  of  the 
agricultural  education  movement  may  be  devised  a 
simple  system  of  bookkeeping  for  the  farm,  with 
tables  of  depreciations  on  farm  equipment  that  can 
be  readily  understood.  Not  until  bookkeeping  is 
accurate  and  scientific  can  the  farmer  tell  whether 
he  is  going  backward  or  forward.  Farmers  make 
little  effort  to-day  to  "keep  books,"  because  they  do 
not  know  how  to  proceed. 

Not  only  ought  agricultural  education  to  point  the 
way  toward  the  successful  production  of  corn, 
wheat,  oats,  rye,  potatoes,  clover,  alfalfa,  tobacco, 
cotton,  rice  and  sugar-cane,  but  it  ought  to  point  the 
way  toward  the  most  profitable  selection  of  crops 
for  particular  soils  and  climates.  Diversified  farm- 
ing will  have  much  to  do  with  the  volume  of  future 
profits.  As  land  values  increase,  farmers  are  com- 
pelled to  acquire  the  capacity  of  adjusting  them- 
selves to  changed  values,  else  they  will  find  them- 
selves persisting  in  the  raising  of  crops  that  can  no 
longer  be  sold  at  a  profit.  It  is  very  doubtful 
whether  the  farmers  of  Illinois,  Indiana  and  Ohio 
can  longer  raise  wheat  in  competition  with  the  supe- 
rior quality  grown  on  the  cheaper  lands  of  the 
Northwest  and  Canada.  Likewise,  there  is  some 
reason  to  believe  that  oats  may  fall  in  the  category 
of  decreasingly  profitable  crops  in  the  prairie  states. 

Farmers  in  the  three  states  attached  to  the  prin- 


106  LEARNING  TO   EARN 

ciple  of  crop  rotation  will  not  give  up  easily  the  prac- 
tise of  a  passing  generation  to  follow  corn  with 
wheat  and  wheat  with  red  clover,  yet  when  the  ar- 
rangement fails  to  show  a  reasonable  profit,  substi- 
tutes must  be  found.  Not  that  the  underlying  prin- 
ciple of  crop  rotation  is  ever  wrong  or  must  be 
abandoned,  but  simply  that  farmers  may  find  it 
necessary  to  vary  the  crops  which  constitute  the 
rotation.  For  this  reason  every  farm  must  be  an 
experimental  station  as  well  as  the  primary  source 
of  food  products  and  the  raw  material  for  clothing. 
Agricultural  education  in  the  public  schools  ought 
to  make  the  boy  an  experimenter  for  truth.  His  in- 
vestigations should  proceed  with  unabated  zeal  when 
his  school  days  proper  are  finished  and  his  farm 
ever  continue  to  be  his  laboratory.  It  is  impossible 
to  over-emphasize  this  fact :  Education  for  the  farm 
is  a  continuing  process.  There  is  not  to  be  any 
quitting  place,  nor  any  point  at  which  an  end  is 
reached.  Farmers,  perhaps,  will  need  no  extra  in- 
ducement to  maintain  intimate  relationship  with  the 
schools  after  regular  attendance  ceases.  But  the 
burden  lies  with  the  schools,  and  they  must  continue 
to  have  something  new  to  offer.  They  must  be 
ready  at  all  times  to  accept  the  practical  problems 
presented  to  them  and  assist  in  their  solution.  By 
following  the  trend  of  prices  and  profits,  the  schools 
ought  to  be  able  to  give  intelligent  direction  in  the 
diversification  of  crops.     In  this  respect  they  will 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS       107 

continue  to  be  the  farmer's  compass  even  after  his 
children  have  begun  to  learn  the  rudiments  of  soil 
chemistry. 

Some  farmers  on  farms  of  from  eighty  to  one 
hundred  and  fifty  acres,  remote  from  the  larger 
markets,  have  found  it  profitable  to  engage  in  fruit 
growing  for  local  markets.  Apples,  pears,  peaches, 
plums  and  berries,  even  vegetables,  find  a  ready  mar- 
ket in  the  smaller  towns  and  villages  where  farmers 
devote  a  little  time  to  the  industry.  It  is  not  uncom- 
mon to  find  these  smaller  farms  furnishing  labor  to 
half  a  dozen  men  and  producing  a  net  profit  far  in 
excess  of  that  derived  from  vast  tracts  where  diver- 
sified farming  is  not  so  easily  carried  out. 

It  is  true  that  fruit  growing  in  a  small  way  or 
incidental  truck  gardening  requires  the  same  scien- 
tific attention  as  the  industry  on  a  larger  scale  if 
success  is  expected.  Trees  have  to  be  sprayed  regu- 
larly and  pruning  attended  to  promptly.  Trees  will 
no  longer  produce  fruit  unless  they  receive  constant 
care. 

A  farm  of  one  hundred  acres  in  Illinois,  Indiana 
or  Ohio  may  furnish  forage  for  fifty  head  of  hogs 
twice  a  year,  with  red  clover  for  fall  pasture,  but 
the  same  farm  may  furnish  forage  for  one  hundred 
head  twice  a  year  by  the  maintenance  of  a  five-acre 
field  of  alfalfa  for  hay  and  for  fall  pasture  after 
two  or  three  cuttings.  These  are  merely  phases  of 
diversified  farming,  the  results  of  experimentation 


108  LEARNING  JO   EARN 

and  planning,  that  may  increase  the  revenues  of  the 
same  farm  by  one- fourth. 

The  farmer's  interest  in  road-building  is  univer- 
sally recognized.  Good  roads  furnish  easy  access  to 
markets  and  reduce  the  wear  of  the  farmer's  vehi- 
cles and  machinery.  They  are  civilizing  agencies 
that  open  up  to  him  the  outside  world,  even  more 
than  railroads  or  trolley  lines.  Moreover,  the 
farmer  is  interested  not  so  much  in  the  volume  of 
expenditures  for  road-building,  which  amount  to 
six  hundred  million  dollars  each  year,  as  in  spending 
wisely  the  money  invested  in  this  enterprise.  He 
has  a  right  to  know  whether  the  forty- four  million 
dollars  expended  in  state  aid  of  road-building  in 
1914  was  economically  used.  He  ought  to  know 
enough  about  making  roads  to  find  in  a  general  way 
the  answer  for  himself.  The  farmer  has  no  great 
commercial  interest  in  the  construction  of  so-called 
trunk  line  highways.  The  Lincoln  highway  and  the 
Dixie  highway  are  all  very  happily  conceived  con- 
veniences for  gentlemen  who  can  afford  to  spend 
their  winters  in  Florida.  Except  to  the  farmers 
who  may  live  adjacent  to  such  highways,  they  mean 
very  little  more  than  would  the  adding  of  another 
ring  to  the  planet  Saturn.  The  farmer's  principal 
interest  in  roads  for  the  present  is  confined  to  those 
of  his  own  township  and  county. 

The  farmer  should  understand  the  importance  of 
a  discriminating  selection  of  seeds  and  their  prepara- 


AGRICULTURE  AND   ITS   NEEDS       109 

tion  for  planting,  how  to  prepare  the  soil  and  how 
to  cultivate  it  to  conserve  moisture,  the  chemical 
properties  of  different  soils  and  of  commercial  fer- 
tilizer and  what  elements  are  needed  for  particular 
soils  and  particular  crops,  the  growing  of  fruit  and 
vegetables,  the  care  of  young  trees  and  vines  and  the 
fertilization  of  trees. 

Conservation  is  an  important  element  in  produc- 
tion and  profits.  The  farmer  needs  to  know  the 
life  history  of  crop  pests  and  how  best  to  avoid 
their  ravages,  the  life  history  of  orchard  pests  and 
the  possibilities  of  spraying.  The  San  Jose  scale 
alone  has  cost  the  United  States  fifty  million  dol- 
lars and  is  now  costing  this  country  in  damages  to 
fruit  trees  five  million  dollars  annually.  The  life 
history  of  common  weeds  and  how  they  may  be 
eradicated  will  constitute  the  most  competent  course 
in  botany  to  be  given  in  the  public  schools.  The 
annual  loss  due  to  weeds  in  the  United  States  ap- 
proximates a  half  billion  dollars  and  the  dockage  of 
wheat  in  one  state,  Minnesota,  amounts  to  a  waste 
annually  of  two  and  one-half  million  dollars.  Indi- 
ana's weed  loss  is  estimated  at  fifteen  and  one-half 
million  dollars  every  year.  The  care  of  farm  ma- 
chinery is  not  so  much  a  matter  of  skill  as  it  is  a 
matter  of  habit.  If  the  boy  is  taught  to  take  care  of 
his  tools  in  the  manual-training  shop,  he  is  not  likely 
to  become  careless  with  his  machinery.  Farm  ma- 
chinery in  use  to-day  is  valued  at  nearly  a  billion  and 


110  ;  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

a  half  dollars  and  probably  a  fourth  of  this  value 
is  lost  every  year  through  sheer  carelessness. 

Raising  live  stock  has  become  an  important  in- 
dustry on  the  farm.  Its  value  to-day  is  nearly  one- 
eighth  that  of  all  farm  property.  The  young  farmer 
will  find  it  profitable  to  know  the  virtues  of  the 
various  breeds,  about  their  care  and  feeding,  dis- 
eases common  to  domestic  animals  and  something 
about  their  treatment  and  prevention.  Poultry  rais- 
ing and  dairying  should  not  be  neglected. 

In  the  manual-training  shop,  the  young  man  will 
learn,  and  does  now  where  manual  training  is 
taught,  the  use  of  small  tools  necessary  on  the  farm, 
and  all  he  needs  to  know  about  electricity  and 
physics.  This  knowledge  is  more  important  than 
formerly  because  of  the  possibilities  of  new  and  im- 
proved labor-saving  devices. 

As  one  authority  has  said;  "The  movement  of 
agricultural  education  is  broader  and  more  compre- 
hensive than  the  mere  adding  of  a  recitation  once  a 
day  from  a  text-book  telling  in  a  brief  way  how 
soil  is  formed,  how  plants  should  be  raised,  and  giv- 
ing a  few  pictures  of  fancy  poultry  and  high-bred 
stock." 

While  agricultural  education  in  the  country  pro- 
ceeds upon  the  theory  that  the  dominant  vocational 
instincts  of  children  in  a  rural  community  are  agri- 
cultural and  not  industrial  or  professional,  care 
should  be  taken  that  country  boys  whose  vocational 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS       111 

instincts  are  not  agricultural  will  receive  equal  en- 
couragement to  follow  out  the  bent  of  their  voca- 
tional inclinations,  whatever  they  may  be.  A  good 
mechanic  or  a  good  physician  must  not  be  spoiled 
in  a  vain  endeavor  to  make  out  of  him  a-  good 
farmer.  A  carefully  planned  system  of  vocational 
guidance  will  discover  the  young  man  or  young 
woman  with  anomalous  tendencies  toward  the 
choice  of  a  life-calling. 

Furthermore,  the  curriculum  must  be  flexible. 
The  teacher  of  the  future  will  be  capable  of  using 
every  resource  which  the  community  offers.  The 
application  of  what  is  taught  will  generally  have  to 
do  with  the  problems  of  the  community.  If  the  les- 
son be  about  weeds  and  their  eradication,  the  study 
ought  to  concern  the  weeds  that  infest  the  farms  of  a 
single  locality;  if  about  crop  pests,  the  study  should 
deal  with  those  pests  current  at  that  time  and  in  that 
place;  if  about  the  care  of  machinery,  the  exhibits 
must  be  the  machinery  used  in  the  locality  where 
the  boys  live.  If  botany  is  studied  in  the  rural 
schools  of  Illinois,  for  instance,  the  text  ought  to  be 
one  written  for  Illinois  and  not  New  York  or  Mas- 
sachusetts. It  is  the  failure  of  the  teacher  to  use 
the  resources  available  locally  that  has  made  the 
school  uninteresting  to  a  very  large  per  cent,  of 
boys  between  the  ages  of  ten  and  sixteen  who  are 
not  in  school  during  any  part  of  the  school  year. 
There  will  have  to  be  a  more  careful  preparation  of 


112  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

text-books,  and  the  book  that  may  be  used  intelli- 
gently in  one  part  of  a  state  may  be  wholly  incon- 
gruous in  another. 

The  independent  success  of  a  few  men  of  broad 
vision  and  of  infinite  capacity  for  converting  the 
dreary  details  of  farm  life  into  interesting  prob- 
lems— and  of  solving  them,  has  exerted  a  localized 
influence  for  better  farming.  Men  of  large  business 
interests  dependent  upon  agricultural  prosperity, 
who  have  enjoyed  sufficient  leisure  to  become  in- 
trospective, have  contributed  occasional  brochures 
of  extraordinary  interest  on  such  subjects  as  the 
imminent  shortage  of  the  food  supply,  the  absence 
of  more  free  land,  high  prices,  waste,  drainage,  the 
middlemen  and  the  railroads.  All  of  these  questions 
are  so  closely  related  to  the  business  of  successful 
farming  that  they  have  elicited  wide-spread  interest 
among  all  classes  of  people,  including  professional 
educators. 

Young  men  who  have  gone  from  the  farm  to  the 
city  to  avoid  the  wearisome  monotony  of  sowing 
and  reaping  and  have  failed  to  find  the  city  all  they 
hoped  it  might  be  and  who  have  retraced  their  steps 
back  to  the  farm,  have  proved  not  infrequently  that 
zeal  in  rural  life  may  be  acquired  from  living  for  a 
time  in  the  city.  These  young  men,  after  a  brief  so- 
journ, have  brought  many  helpful  things  with  them 
from  the  city,  not  the  least  of  which  are  method 
in  doing  work  and  mental  habits  which  make  possi- 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS       113 

ble  a  more  or  less  scientific  approach  to  bountiful 
yields  of  corn  and  wheat,  a  profitable  orchard  and 
well-considered  marketing. 

But  these  are  merely  sidelights  of  the  movement 
for  a  system  of  agricultural  education  that  will  be 
universal  in  its  sphere.  Although  agricultural  pros- 
perity apparently  is  greater  to-day  than  ever  before, 
we  should  not  undertake  to  maintain  that  conditions 
are  so  much  better  because  the  aggregate  wealth  is 
greater.  We  are  not  quite  so  ready  to  cite  aggregate 
wealth  as  an  evidence  of  prosperity  as  we  once 
were.  We  now  know  the  fallacy  of  the  allegation 
that  three  men  are  prosperous  if  one  of  them  has 
ninety-five  per  cent,  of  their  total  wealth. 

Not  long  ago  there  was  a  period  from  the  middle 
of  November  to  the  first  of  March  when  very  little 
work  was  done  on  the  farm.  The  business  man  can 
not  afford  a  four-  or  five-months'  vacation,  nor  can 
the  farmer.  The  business  man  hardly  dares  to  quit 
work  for  two  weeks.  Not  that  the  farmer  does  not 
work  hard  enough,  but  his  work  is  poorly  planned 
if  he  has  nothing  that  he  can  do  a  third  of  each 
year.  It  were  far  better  for  the  farmer  to  quit  work 
at  noon  on  Saturday  every  week  in  the  year  than  to 
work  long  hours  during  the  spring  and  summer  sea- 
son and  cease  work  altogether  during  the  winter 
months.  The  farmer  who  loves  his  work  and  who 
is  bent  on  attacking  its  problems  systematically  will 
not  care  to  pass  long  periods  in  absolute  idleness. 


114  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

He  will  find  something  profitable  to  do,  no  matter 
how  bad  the  weather  may  be,  and  he  will  work 
where  he  may  be  comfortable.  The  first  warm  days 
of  spring  will  not  find  his  stable  doors  banked  with 
manure,  his  seed  for  the  spring  planting  unprovided 
or  his  tools  unfit  for  immediate  use.  He  will  have 
carefully  planned  his  work  for  the  next  season  and 
will  have  attended  carefully  to  the  feeding  of  his 
stock.  The  long  evenings  he  will  have  spent  in  read- 
ing the  literature  of  the  farm. 

As  the  landscape  gardener  plans  the  beautiful 
park  with  its  boulevards,  its  lagoon,  its  shrubbery 
and  its  attractive  vistas,  so  must  the  farmer  plan 
his  work  long  in  advance  of  the  actual  effort. 

As  much  perhaps  as  any  other  industry,  farming 
has  become  one  for  highly  specialized  and  trained 
minds.  It  has  always  required  brains  as  well  as 
brawn,  but  as  long  as  there  was  no  danger  of  under- 
production, it  was  not  so  important  socially  that 
many  active-minded  young  men  left  the  farm  for 
the  city  and  that  there  remained  the  young  men  who 
lacked  sufficient  initiative  to  depart  from  the  ways 
of  their  fathers.  To-day  it  is  different.  As  prices  of 
food  products  have  risen,  as  markets  have  widened 
and  values  of  farm  lands  increased,  farming  is  far 
more  a  vocation  for  brains  than  ever  before.  Young 
men  who  inherit  farms  which  their  fathers  and 
grandfathers  carved  out  of  a  rude  wilderness  may 
be  able  to  get  on  by  following  obsolete  methods, 


AGRICULTURE   AND    ITS    NEEDS       115 

but  young  men  not  so  fortunate  will  never  be  able 
to  own  a  farm  of  their  own  unless  their  vision  is 
widened  by  scientific  facts. 

The  farmer  will  not  be  able  to  escape  muscular 
effort  altogether.  The  hard  labor  must  be  per- 
formed. Drains  must  be  laid,  the  soil  plowed  and 
cultivated,  the  harvest  reaped,  no  matter  how  hot 
the  sun  may  be.  Improved  machinery,  however,  has 
already  done  much  to  lighten  the  labors  of  the 
farmer  and  will  do  even  more. 

Agricultural  education  will  do  more  to  lift  the 
farmer  to  a  plane  of  absolute  equality  with  business 
and  the  professions  than  any  movement  yet  started 
in  this  country.  The  country  "rube"  will  be  remem- 
bered only  in  fiction  and  in  silly  plays  that  have  long 
runs  on  Broadway.  Agricultural  education  will  give 
to  the  farmer  a  new  self-confidence,  a  new  self- 
respect.  It  will  secure  his  economic  status  and  widen 
his  social  vision. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BUSINESS  AND  ITS  EDUCATIONAL  NEEDS 

Four  fundamental  processes  of  business — Distribution  is  vital 
to  the  economic  progress  of  the  nation—Exploitation  of  nat- 
ural resources  no  longer  possible — Specific  education  for  the 
science  of  business  is  needed — All  classes  should  become  fa- 
miliar with  elementary  business  practises — Agencies  of  educa- 
tion have  failed  to  grasp  commercial  problems — Certain  as- 
pects of  foreign  trade  —  Germany's  commercial  prestige 
founded  on  the  careful  training  of  commercial  workers — Our 
need  of  trained  consuls — Seven  million  people  depend  upon 
"picking-up"  process  of  education — Our  commercial  failures 
are  increasing — Our  lack  of  self-reliance — Labor  efficiency  is 
a  matter  of  simplified  effort — Mismanagement  of  railroads — 
Training  for  salesmanship — Advertising — Our  banking  system 
is  inadequate — Commercial  education  in  Germany— Our  edu- 
cational needs. 

Business  has  to  do  with  four  important  processes 
— the  production,  preparation,  distribution  and  con- 
sumption of  commodities.  Business,  therefore,  has 
to  do  with  the  most  improved  methods  by  which 
these  processes  may  be  carried  on.  It  is  through 
their  intelligent  performance,  as  Herbert  Spencer 
said,  that  civilized  life  is  made  possible.  Their  in- 
telligent performance  depends,  as  Spencer  also  said, 
upon  scientific  knowledge.  There  is  no  phase  of 
human  life  that  does  not  depend  for  perpetuity  and 
wholesome  progress  upon  accurate  business  precepts 
and  practises. 

116 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        117 

Of  the  four  important  processes  with  which  busi- 
ness is  concerned,  distribution  is  most  vital  to  all  our 
people.  It  affects  a  greater  number  of  people  di- 
rectly because  it  opens  or  closes  to  them  the  chan- 
nels of  consumption.  Its  indirect  effects  are  felt  al- 
most as  keenly  in  the  production  and  preparation  of 
commodities  because  these  processes  must  look  ul- 
timately to  markets  which  our  system  of  distribu- 
tion seeks  out  and  finds.  From  the  social  point  of 
view,  therefore,  distribution  determines  to  some  ex- 
tent the  economic  status  of  all  our  people.  This  is 
particularly  true  since  we  are  all  consumers  and 
since  about  twenty-five  million  workers  are  also  en- 
gaged either  in  primary  production  or  in  the  prep- 
aration of  commodities  for  consumption. 

While  the  country  suffers  a  most  pressing  need 
for  improved  methods  of  distribution,  an  equally 
urgent  need  exists  among  the  seven  million  men  and 
women  engaged  in  all  departments  of  business  for  a 
more  efficient  grasp  of  their  routine  duties;  a  more 
comprehensive  understanding  of  the  commercial  ob-  ] 
jective;  a  more  thoroughly  scientific  approach  to  ~ 
business  details.  Since  business  necessarily  includes 
the  directing  energy  of  production  and  preparation 
as  well  as  the.  entire  energy  in  the  distribution  of 
commodities,  it  is  with  these  various  phases  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce  that  we  are  here  interested. 

While  we  are  providing  vocational  education  for 
the  industrial  worker,  the  farmer  and  home-maker, 


118  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

we  must  not  neglect  the  directing  minds  and  hands 
of  production  and  preparation,  especially  in  mining 
and  manufacturing,  or  the  energy  by  which  raw  or 
finished  products  are  distributed.  This  energy  also 
must  be  trained.  The  minds  which  control  the  en- 
ergy are  susceptible  to  education  for  efficiency,  hith- 
erto unrealized.  There  can  be  no  considerable  prog- 
/  ress  in  business  unless  executives  and  managers  and 
/  officials  are  capable,  and  education  for  business 
might  concern  itself  solely  with  the  training  of  ex- 
ecutives and  managers  and  officials  except  that  a 
great  body  of  commercial  workers — small  mer- 
chants, salesmen,  stenographers,  bookkeepers,  clerks 
— would  be  neglected  altogether.  The  lower  reaches 
)  in  the  process  of  distribution  are  important  to  the 
success  of  the  higher  reaches.  Education  for  busi- 
ness has  to  do  with  the  training  of  accountants  and 
f  clerks  quite  as  much  as  sales  managers  or  purchas- 
ing agents,  even  though  the  emphasis  of  this  chap- 
ter rests,  as  it  ought  to  rest  at  this  time,  on  the  larger 
shortcomings  of  business — those  for  which  man- 
agers and  directors  are  mainly  responsible. 

Never  before  did  the  very  happiness  and  com- 
fort of  our  people  so  much  depend  upon  a  scientific 
grasp  of  business.  We  can  no  longer  depend  for  our 
prosperity  upon  the  exploitation  of  raw  materials — 
land,  minerals  and  forests — because,  forsooth,  they 
are  not  available  for  further  exploitation.  Agricul- 
ture invokes  our  attention  because  it  has  come  to  be 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        119 


a  problem  of  yielding  a  satisfactory  return  on  fixed 
capital  as  well  as  of  feeding  our  people.  Mining  can 
hardly  keep  ahead  of  consumption,  and  the  best 
grades  of  lumber  available  a  generation  ago  are  not 
to  be  had  to-day  at  fancy  prices.  Agriculture,  min- 
ing and  lumbering,  by  necessity  reduced  to  quanti- 
tative formulae,  have  brought  industry,  trade,  trans- 
portation and  banking,  face  to  face  with  violent 
readjustments  of  method  and  imminent  commercial 
problems  where  exact  knowledge  accessible  to 
trained  minds  only  is  helpful.  We  have  now  to  look 
for  markets  for  things  we  do  not  yet  produce  be- 
cause thirty-eight  million  people  must  have  employ- 
ment at  a  comfortable  wage.  We  have  to  consider 
untried  processes  because  old  ways  fail  to  keep  go- 
ing industrial,  mercantile  and  financial  enterprise. 
If  we  suffer  from  commercial  depressions,  we  must 
remember  that  agriculture  is  haphazard,  industry 
inefficient,  trade  prejudiced  by  obsolete  theories  and 
banking  behind  the  times  it  seeks  to  serve.  Primary 
production  being  wasteful,  the  subsequent  stages  by 
which  it  reaches  the  consumer  are  disorganized,  un- 
reliable and  extravagant.  What  we  need  is  not  so 
much  statutes  which  declare  certain  practises  legally 
wrong,  but  a  public  awakening  to  the  fact  that  prac- 
tises legally  wrong  are  actually  wrong  as  matters  of 
national  or  individual  policy.  Specific  education  for 
the  innumerable  departments  of  business — education 
that  will   reduce  business  to  a  science 


120  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

squarely  the  imminent  problems  of  the  commercial 
vocations,  is  our  crying  need  at  this  time. 

Whatever  vocation  the  young  man  chooses; 
whether  he  identify  himself  with  the  wage-earners, 
the  shop-keepers,  the  farmers  or  with  one  of  the 
professions,  he  ought  to  know  the  elements  of  busi- 
ness practise — the  simpler  details  of  banking,  the 
general  functions,  uses  and  elementary  law  of 
stocks,  bonds,  mortgages,  deeds,  notes  and  con- 
tracts ;  methods  for  the  quick  calculation  of  interest 
and  discount;  the  fundamental  law  governing  part- 
nerships, stock  companies  and  corporations ;  the  ele- 
ments of  taxation  and  perhaps  the  workings  of 
credit  bureaus  and  commercial  agencies.  That  young 
men  may  have  this  information  when  they  begin  the 
business  of  life,  instruction  should  begin  in  the  ele- 
mentary or  prevocational  schools.  For  the  purposes 
of  grouping  its  vital  departments  and  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  chapter,  business  may  be  said  to  em- 
brace manufacturing,  transportation,  merchandising 
and  banking.  The  question  presented  herein  is,  what 
may  education  do  for  business?  What  may  educa- 
tion do  for  manufacturing,  for  transportation,  for 
mercantile  operations,  for  banking?  It  does  not  re- 
quire an  imagination  to  believe  that  manufacturing 
is  not  so  efficient  as  it  ought  to  be ;  that  transporta- 
tion facilities  are  insufficient,  somewhat  unreliable 
and  wasteful;  that  the  retail  and  wholesale  trading 
in  merchandise  is  leaky,  wanting  in  vision,  moral- 


BUSINESS   AND   ITS   NEEDS        121 

ity  and  scientific  management;  that  banking  is  un- 
trustworthy, inadequate,  over-greedy  and  narrow- 
gauged.  What  may  education  do  to  create  better 
conditions  in  the  four  departments  of  business? 
There  has  been  little  scientific  study  and  criticism 
of  the  commercial  objective.  Business  itself  has 
evolved  practically  all  of  the  scientific  knowledge  at 
hand  regarding  commercial  principles  and  practises. 
The  agencies  of  education  have  contributed  little. 

"Business,"  says  Cheesman  A.  Herrick,1  "now 
means  more  than  a  rule  of  thumb;  it  is  complex,  in- 
tricate, scientific,  and  those  who  are  to  engage  in  it 
need  a  different  equipment  than  has  hitherto  been 
thought  sufficient  for  the  business  man." 

I  The  equipment  heeded  for  business  varies,  nat- 
urally, with  the  nature  of  the  particular  business  for 
the  very  reason  that  it  is  complex,  intricate,  scien- 
tific. No  doubt  some  men  will  be  "born"  to  a  par- 
ticular business  just  as  some  are  perhaps  "born"  to 
a  particular  trade,  but  there  is  an  opportunity 
through  the  channels  of  education  for  those  badly 
born  to  be  reborn.  Education  is  able  to  train  for 
manufacturing  even  though  the  time  is  remote  when 
it  will  train  for  manufacturing,  say  of  washing  ma- 
chines. There  are  certain  general  principles,  how- 
ever, in  the  science  of  manufacturing  washing  ma- 
chines that  apply  equally  to  the  manufacture  of 

1  Commercial  Education,  A  Demand  of  the  Times. 


122  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

stoves  or  automobiles.  Education  can  present  these 
principles  to  young  men  who  expect  to  engage  in 
manufacturing.  The  colleges  have  been  trying  to 
teach  the  science  of  transportation  for  many  years, 
but  young  men  who  expect  to  engage  in  transporta- 
tion enterprise  need  to  know  far  more  about 
transportation  than  merely  the  general  history  of  its 
development.  There  is  a  political  division  on  the 
question  of  aids  and  subsidies  to  promote  water 
transportation  which  has  obscured  the  merits  of  the 
question.  Mercantile  operations  present  a  tortuous 
path  to  success  and  those  who  have  engaged  in  the 
retail  or  wholesale  trade  will  bear  witness  to  this 
truth.  Education  can  at  least  find  the  approximate 
width  of  this  path  and  point  out  its  boundaries. 

Banking  is  admitted  to  be  the  keel  of  commerce, 
the  foundation  of  a  nation's  prosperity,  the  magic 
touch  that  sets  in  motion  every  business  enterprise. 
Bankers  lack  vision  more  than  anything  else,  but 
lack  of  vision  is  only  another  name  for  ignorance. 
Bankers  can  be  educated  for  their  vocation  and, 
valuable  as  apprenticeship  is,  they  can  acquire  from 
an  educational  program  the  assembled  intelligence 
of  the  banking  world,  something  they  will  never  be 
able  to  get  in  a  single  accounting  room. 

Certain  information  and  training  are  needed  in 
all  business — manufacturing,  transportation,  mer- 
chandising and  banking.  Penmanship,  commercial 
arithmetic,  bookkeeping,  commercial  geography,  the 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        123 

natural  sciences,  typewriting  and  stenography, 
industrial  history,  business  forms,  and  correspond- 
ence, the  science  of  trade,  political  economy,  cost 
accounting,  some  modern  languages,  business  ad- 
ministration and  the  theory  of  modern  mercantile 
operations  may  well  be  embraced  in  a  general  system 
in  training  for  business  to  which  may  be  added,  say, 
the  principles  of  corporation  finance,  salesmanship, 
advertising,  real  estate  taxation,  commercial  law, 
money  and  credit,  insurance,  study  of  raw  mate- 
rials, civil  government,  foreign  trade  customs,  ac- 
cording to  the  scope  of  business  for  which  prepara- 
tion is  sought.  This  is  merely  a  rough  outline  of  a 
program  of  training  for  business  which  will  divide 
itself  in  accordance  with  the  plan  outlined  in  this 
book  into  prevocational,  vocational  and  advanced 
vocational  training. 

There  is  a  hint  of  hopefulness  in  certain  aspects 
of  our  foreign  trade.  We  are  exporting  a  greater 
percentage  of  finished  products  than  ever  before  and 
importing  a  considerably  greater  quantity  of  raw 
products.  Great  Britain,  Germany  and  France  have 
been  our  greatest  foreign  customers,  buying  annu- 
ally of  us  merchandise  valued  at  more  than  a  billion 
dollars.  The  European  military  crisis  has  greatly 
changed  the  character  of  this  trade  and  our  lack  of 
merchant  ships  has  had  a  further  depressing  effect 
on  our  foreign  commerce.  We  have  suffered  a  tem- 
porary loss  of  revenue  on  account  of  the  suspension 


124  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

of  foreign  textile  operations,  but  if  the  war  should 
stimulate  the  expansion  of  domestic  manufacturing 
and  the  use  of  our  raw  cotton  at  home,  our  tem- 
porary embarrassment  would  be  unimportant.  We 
ought  to  abandon  our  trade  in  such  commodities  as 
logs  and  unfinished  lumber  of  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  sell  Germany,  products  valued  at  five  and 
one-half  million  dollars.  The  United  States  must 
conserve  its  lumber  for  domestic  consumption. 

South  American  trade  is  inviting,  especially  since 
the  completion  of  the  Panama  Canal,  which  shortens 
the  distance  from  eastern  cities  to  South  American 
ports  south  of  the  western  terminal  by  five  thousand 
miles.  But  our  steamship  service  must  be  improved, 
we  must  buy  the  raw  products  of  South  America 
that  ships  may  be  loaded  both  ways  and  establish 
American  banks  for  the  benefit  of  this  trade.  We 
ought  to  be  able  to  compete  with  Great  Britain  and 
Germany  in  the  sale  of  such  commodities  as  electric 
wire  and  cables,  iron  and  steel  wire,  general  machin- 
ery, railway  coaches  and  cars,  cement,  firearms  and 
ammunition,  tubes,  pipes  and  motor-cars.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  we  are  a  bad  third  in  the  trade  of  practi- 
cally all  these  commodities. 

Germany  won  the  trade  of  the  South  American 
republics  in  its  laboratories  and  in  its  schoolrooms 
by  patient  and  skilful  attention  to  the  needs  of  the 
country.  The  United  States  can  win  this  trade  as 
Germany  won  it.   We  must  adopt  the  same  plan  of 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        125 

action.  The  rule  of  thumb  must  be  abandoned.  Busi- 
ness must  be  made  scientific.  Commercial  education 
can  give  to  our  foreign  business  the  scientific  basis 
it  has  so  long  needed.  Spanish  is  the  prevailing 
tongue  throughout  Mexico  and  South  America  and 
in  our  commercial  schools  it  ought  to  be  emphasized 
to  the  exclusion  of  languages  which  are  wanting  in 
commercial  significance.  We  must  seek  the  markets 
of  South  America,  Mexico  and  the  Orient  and  a 
knowledge  of  their  languages  is  imperative  to  this 
end. 

We  need  better  trained  consuls  to  represent  us  in 
foreign  markets  and  we  need  to  arouse  an  interest 
among  our  business  men  in  the  facilities  they  already 
furnish.  There  ought  to  be  special  provision  for 
training  young  men  for  foreign  trade  posts.  At 
present,  our  consular  service  smacks  too  much  of  the 
sinecure,  largely  because  our  representatives,  unless 
they  have  had  wide  experience,  know  little  about 
their  work  and  have  little  inspiration  for  it. 

"The  getting  of  markets,"  says  Herrick,2  "is  not 
extravagant  claims;  it  is  a  matter  of  education,  and 
if  we  are  to  insure  our  economic  future,  we  must 
give  to  our  commercial  leaders  wide  and  deep  train- 
ing in  the  special  subjects  with  which  they  have  to 
deal." 


2  Cheesman  A.  Herrick,  Commercial  Education,  A  Demand 
of  the  Times,  in  Supplement  to  Fifth  Yearbook  of  National 
Herb  art  Society. 


126  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

But  our  domestic  trade  requires  careful  consider- 
ation and  while  we  are  devoting  ourselves  to  the 
commercial  needs  of  South  America,  we  should  not 
forget  that  home  industry  and  home  markets  and 
home  consumption  are  more  nearly  vital  to  our  pros- 
perity and  prestige.  "It  is  mere  tradition,"  says  one 
writer,  "which  makes  the  foreign  field  seem  a  more 
proper  subject  of  governmental  solicitude  than  the 
domestic  field." 

There  were  nearly  seven  million  people  over  ten 
years  of  age  in  1910  engaged  in  work  which  may  be 
included  properly  in  the  managing  or  business  vo- 
cations. These  seven  million  people  included  the 
managers,  superintendents,  foremen,  overseers  and 
officials  of  manufactories,  retailers,  clerks,  traveling 
salesmen,  bookkeepers,  persons  directing  mining  en- 
terprises and  about  a  half  million  people  actively 
engaged  in  directing  transportation  and  communi- 
cation. Seven  million  people  represent  about  eight- 
een per  cent,  of  all  the  people  of  the  United  States 
over  ten  years  of  age  engaged  in  gainful  occupa- 
tions. This  eighteen  per  cent,  is  an  especially  im- 
portant per  cent,  to  the  prosperity  of  all  enterprise 
because  it  encompasses  the  directing  energy. 

It  is  these  seven  million  people  who  are  forced  to 
get  their  education  for  business  in  the  "nooks  and 
corners,"  who  receive  no  specific  assistance  from  the 
public  schools.  They  have  acquired  a  limited  knowl- 
edge of  the  science  of  business  by  empirical  meth- 


BUSINESS   AND    ITS    NEEDS        127 

ods,  by  the  "picking-up"  process.  Such  training  in 
the  office,  store  and  shop,  is  generally  less  compre- 
hensive than  the  source.  It  yields  to  the  same  vari- 
able as  the  dirt  got  from  one  hole  to  fill  up  the  next. 
The  son,  who  inherits  his  father's  business  which  it 
has  taken  a  lifetime  to  build,  may  destroy  every- 
thing by  a  few  years  of  reckless  misdirection,  merely 
because  he  has  had  no  opportunity  for  training 
other  than  that  in  dead  languages  obtained  in  uni- 
versities attractive  because  of  their  traditions. 

The  "hocus-pocus"  process  of  catching  on  to  sci- 
entific methods  of  business  is  quite  inadequate  for 
present-day  needs.  It  does  not  develop  initiative,  but 
is  dependent  wholly  upon  imitation.  It  does  not  de- 
velop a  progressive  spirit,  but  is  content  to  follow 
archaic  methods.  It  fails  to  produce  a  spirit  of  per- 
manence in  business  and  industry  and  on  the  con- 
trary is  speculative,  insecure  and  unethical.  Sales 
managers,  failing  to  realize  on  stupid  or  visionary 
plans,  are  wont  to  turn  to  sharp  practises  and  our 
sharp  practise  has  given  us  a  bad  name  in  most  of 
the  great  markets  of  the  world.  Our  business  men 
are  not  prepared  to  meet  the  new  and  changing  de- 
mands of  industry  and  trade.  A  superior  economic 
leadership  is  required.  A  wider  vision  is  demanded. 
Our  commercial  responsibilities  have  been  very 
much  augmented  lately  by  territorial  expansion,  by 
the  approaching  exhaustion  of  our  natural  re- 
sources, by  our  increased  population,  by  the  unex- 


128  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

pected  demand  of  European  countries  for  our 
products. 

Since  1880,  the  population  of  the  United  States 
has  just  about  doubled;  the  wealth  of  the  country 
has  considerably  more  than  doubled,  as  has  also  the 
number  of  manufacturing  establishments.  At  the 
same  time,  the  number  of  commercial  failures  in  the 
United  States  has  more  than  trebled.  Likewise,  the 
liabilities  of  fifteen  thousand-odd  firms  failing  in 
1912  were  more  than  three  times  the  liabilities  of 
the  firms  failing  in  1880.  The  number  of  commer- 
cial failures  in  the  comparatively  normal  year  of 
1912  was  three  times  the  failures  of  the  panic  of 
1873  and  exceeded  the  failures  during  the  panic  of 
1893.  Of  the  total  failures  in  1913,  69.9  per  cent, 
were  mercantile  firms,  26.3  per  cent,  were  manu- 
facturers, and  3.9  per  cent,  were  brokers  and  trans- 
porters. More  than  90  per  cent,  of  all  tradesmen 
are  said  to  fail,  and  the  average  life  of  all  business 
enterprises  is  only  a  very  few  years.  This  is  not  a 
creditable  record  for  the  American  business  man, 
not  an  enviable  record  for  the  business  of  the  coun- 
try. 

There  should  be  a  more  delicate  coordination  in 
primary  and  secondary  industrial  processes,  coordi- 
nation in  the  manufacturing  process,  coordination 
in  the  distribution  process  and  coordination  be- 
tween the  two  processes.  Efficiency  is  the  magic 
word,  efficiency  not  only  of  labor,  but  efficiency  of 


BUSINESS   AND    ITS    NEEDS        129 

the  energy  which  directs  labor.  "The  labor  to  be 
made  more  effective,"  said  Louis  D.  Brandeis,  "is 
that  of  the  managers  and  high-salaried  officials  quite 
as  much  as  that  of  the  wage-earners.,, 

In  the  United  States,  business  has  depended  too 
much  on  fictitious  aids.  There  is  lacking  both  the 
spirit  of  independence  and  self-reliance,  a  spirit  that 
is  conscious  of  its  own  power,  willing  to  work  out 
its  own  destinies,  and  safe  in  its  own  resourceful- 
ness. Business  men  lean  too  much  on  tariff  sched- 
ules, subsidies  and  bonuses.  Public  utility  magnates 
will  not  undertake  a  new  enterprise  unless  they  are 
presented  with  a  franchise  that  practically  robs  the 
people  of  their  present  rights  and  future  generations 
of  their  rightful  heritage.  Bankers  grumble  about 
currency  laws  and  have  nothing  better  to  suggest 
than  the  vague  outlines  of  a  plan  which  would  only 
accentuate  whatever  viciousness  there  may  be  in  the 
present  banking  system. 

Here  again,  we  shall  find  the  explanation  in  the 
failure  of  the  educational  system  to  train  young 
men  for  business  as  a  fixed  and  definite  vocation, — 
a  vocation  intimately  related  to  the  economic  life  of 
the  nation. 

When  men  are  trained  scientifically  for  business, 
the  rule  of  thumb  will  no  longer  govern.  Accuracy 
and  precision  will  prevail.  We  will  not  be  compelled 
to  await  the  annual  audit  to  determine  whether  a 
firm  has  made  money.   Correct  systems  of  cost  ac- 


130  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

counting,  rigidly  maintained,  will  determine  in- 
stantly what  has  been  accomplished  and  whether  the 
balance  is  on  the  debit  or  credit  side  of  the  ledger. 
Business  is  very  much  in  need  of  cost  accounting,  a 
subject  which  yields  readily  to  instruction  in  the 
vocation  schools  of  commerce. 

Our  people  need  to  be  educated  to  use  commodi- 
ties of  the  very  best  material  and  workmanship.  Any 
other  policy  is  extravagant  and  wasteful.  Every 
year,  for  instance,  we  waste  many  million  dollars  in 
buying  cheap  furniture — chairs,  tables  and  beds — 
that  fall  to  pieces  in  a  few  months.  Comparatively, 
we  make  very  little  good  furniture  in  this  country, 
first,  because  we  do  not  have  workmen  who  know 
how  to  produce  it,  and  second,  because  the  purchaser 
has  been  deluded  into  believing  that  bizarre  curves 
of  a  power-driven  chisel  are  preferable  to  material 
and  workmanship.  If  we  educate  every  young  man 
to  the  economy  of  good  material  and  good  work- 
manship and  a  few  of  them  to  produce  such  finished 
products  in  the  furniture  industry,  there  will  not  be 
left  a  market  for  the  "clap-trap' '  which  fills  the 
homes  of  people  with  modest  incomes.  The  German 
people  have  been  educated  to  the  use  of  better  ma- 
terial and  workmanship  in  precisely  this  way. 

Manufacturing  and  mercantile  plants  are  ineffi- 
ciently operated  because,  probably,  the  directing 
hand  does  not  know  how  to  make  them  efficient. 
When  the  directing  hand  can  not  determine  what  is 


BUSINESS   AND   ITS    NEEDS       131 

wrong,  it  is  quite  natural  to  charge  deficiencies  to 
labor.  If  foremen,  superintendents  and  managers 
lack  scientific  preparation  for  the  positions  they  fill, 
they  will  not  know  what  is  to  be  done  when  they  find 
themselves  being  outstripped  by  a  competitor. 
.  /  Raw  materials  must  be  available  in  ju&t  sufficient 
^quantity  to  insure  efficient  handling.  Every  part  of 
the  manufacturing  plant  must  be  utilized  for  maxi- 
mum production.  There  must  be  no  waste,  no  idle 
machinery,  if  it  is  possible  to  avoid  it.  Working  cap- 
ital must  be  safeguarded  and  conserved,  but  oppor- 
tunities for  plant  expansion  must  not  be  permitted 
to  pass.  In  mercantile  enterprises  every  department 
must  be  "made  to^pay."  Deliveries  must  be  prompt, 
for  there  is  no  better  way  to  get  and  hold  customers. 
Labor  efficiency  is  not  a  matter  of  "speeding  up" 
so  much  as  of  simplified  effort — of  removing  drags 
on  the  workman's  energy.  This  is  a  subject  calling 
for  intelligent  study  by  foremen,  superintendents 
and  "higher-ups."  The  workman  is  not  responsible, 
and  managers  who*  persist  in  their  complaints 
against  the  "decra^^ig  efficiency  of  labor"  are  them- 
selves often  at  f^^K  Furthermore,  managers  of  in- 
dustrial, mercantffe  and  transportation  enterprises 
must  be  reconciled  to  the  steady  improvement  of 
wages  and  working  conditions.  For  this  reason,  a 
constant  adjustment  and  readjustment  of  methods 
to  conform  to  new  cost  units  will  be  necessary.  In- 
creased wages  and  improved  working  conditions  will 


132  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

be  brought  about  largely  by  collective  bargaining 
and  industrial  managers  may  as  well  acquiesce  in 
the  spread  of  collective  bargaining  because  it  is  a 
phase  of  our  new  democracy — industrial  democracy 
— and  will  not  be  surrendered. 

We  are  just  passing  through  an  era  of  railroad 
reorganization  in  this  country.  We  have  witnessed 
the  financial  collapse  of  one  railroad  after  another 
and  we  have  seen  officers  and  directors  dragged 
through  the  courts  to  answer  to  charges  of  criminal 
neglect,  wrongful  manipulation  of  securities  and 
gross  mismanagement.  In  the  wake  of  investigation, 
revelation  and  prosecution,  the  railroads  have  come 
humbly  enough  before  the  bar  of  regulatory  com- 
missions asking  for  increased  rates.  In  some  cases, 
the  petitions  have  been  granted  but,  on  the  whole, 
the  tangled  state  of  their  finances  and  the  attendant 
public  distrust  have  prevented  a  fair  and  impartial 
consideration  of  their  petitions.  Well  managed 
roads  have  suffered  the  odium  that  attaches  gen- 
erally to  the  railroad  business.  It  is  difficult  to  de- 
termine how  much  of  the  mismanagement  is  due  to 
greed,  wilful  inefficiency  and  unrestrained  specula- 
tion and  how  much  is  due  to  ignorance.  In  some, 
cases,  officers  and  directors  have  been  shrewd 
enough  to  loot  a  railroad  treasury  and  escape  prose- 
cution. Education  for  business  is  a  hopeless  remedy 
in  such  cases.  What  is  needed,  rather,  is  education 
in  morals. 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        133 

But  the  era  of  speculative  control  is  at  least 
checked  and,  more  than  ever  before,  railroads  will 
be  operated  for  service.  Regulative  bodies  are  ex- 
pected to  insist  that  common  carriers  will  no  longer 
be  permitted  to  capitalize  earnings;  that  transpor- 
tation be  reduced  to  the  science  of  operation. 
Assuming  that  this  is  true  and  remembering  that  a 
well-known  corporation  lawyer,  who  has  since  dem- 
onstrated the  truth  of  some  charges  he  made  against 
the  railroads,  estimated  that  they  waste  a  million 
dollars  a  day,  it  is  almost  conclusive  that  education 
can  do  something  for  transportation.  It  ought  not 
to  be  necessary  to  have  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  disclose  the  existence  of  practises  that 
are  unproductive  and  wasteful  where  they  ought  to 
be  otherwise.  Much  to  the  chagrin  of  the  railroad 
managers,  the  Commission  has  repeatedly  done  this 
very  thing.  Yet,  the  only  explanation  offered  by  the 
railroads  was  that  others  were  doing  the  same.  If 
education  for  transportation  can  merely  devise  a 
correct  basis  by  which  the  cost  of  carrying  different 
classes  of  mail  may  be  computed,  it  will  have  thor- 
oughly justified  the  expense  of  inaugurating  such  a 
system  of  vocational  training. 

.  Inefficient  salesmanship  is  only  one  phase  of  the 
mercantile  business.  It  is  pitiable  enough  to  witness 
a  salesman  hunt  a  catalog  by  which  to  identify,  by 
the  period  it  represents,  a  piece  of  furniture  or  to 
mistake  solid  mahogany  for  veneer,  but  the  retail 


134  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

and  jobbers*  business  has  a  hundred  angles  where 
inexcusable  blunders  are  made. 

There  is  scarcely  a  large  department  store  which 
every  day  does  not  lose  a  good  customer  because  de- 
partment stores  are  overrun  with  four-dollar-a-week 
clerks.  It  is  bad  enough,  perhaps,  to  pay  girls  four 
dollars  a  week — bad  from  the  social  point  of  view — 
but  it  is  quite  as  disastrous  to  business  to  employ 
young  women  who  are  so  poorly  trained  that  they 
can  earn  no  more  than  that  amount.  Store  managers 
do  recognize,  of  course,  a  difference  in  selling  ability 
since  salaries  vary,  but  apparently  they  have  not 
been  able  to  understand  that  an  inefficient  salesman 
or  saleswoman,  the  four-dollar-a-week  order,  is  a 
positive  injury  to  the  prosperity  of  a  business.  Very 
few  store  managers  have  been  able  to  comprehend 
the  possibilities  of  efficient  training  for  salesman- 
ship. Unless  the  public  is  to  believe  that  department 
stores  presume  to  impose  upon  the  credulity  of  their 
patrons,  it  is  hard  to  explain  the  presence  of  igno- 
rant and  discourteous  salesmen.  There  are  many 
elements  in  the  advertising  of  the  average  depart- 
ment store — sheer  quackery — which  suggest  that 
this  is  precisely  the  philosophy  behind  the  ineffi- 
ciency of  salesmanship  in  department  stores.  What 
is  true  of  department  stores  is  equally  true  of  retail 
business  generally. 

Of  course,  it  is  worth  while  to  have  correspond- 
ence neatly  typed  and  correctly  spelled,  but  it  is  also 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        135 

worth  while  to  depart  from  stereotyped  language  in 
correspondence.  Business  can  not  survive  long  un- 
der the  stress  of  modern  competition  unless  there 
is  a  rigid  system  of  cost  accounting,  and  the  mercan- 
tile business  is  no  exception.  Business  men  need  to 
have  impressed  upon  them  at  a  time  of  life  when 
new  principles  make  their  greatest  impression — in 
their  youth — the  importance  of  courteous  service, 
rigid  economy  in  operation,  prompt  deliveries  and 
accurate  fulfillment  of  promises  and  estimates. 
Bankers  who  advance  money  to  maintain  commer- 
cial enterprises  have  a  right  to  expect  that  estimates 
are  conservative  and  that  merchants  as  well  as  man- 
ufacturers and  transporters  will  do  everything  hu- 
manly possible,  not  merely  to  equal  the  estimate,  but 
to  exceed  it.  Too  many  young  men  fail  in  mercantile 
capacities  because  they  bring  to  the  business  no  new 
ideas  or  because  they  merely  fall  into  the  rut  already 
prepared  for  them  by  those  who  are  too  old  to  learn 
anything  new  and  too  stupid  to  admit  their  short- 
comings. 

There  is  growing  up  in  America  strong  sentiment 
for  truthful  advertising.  Here  and  there  a  firm  has 
won  for  itself  an  enviable  position  in  the  commer- 
cial world  because  its  advertising  is  truthful  and  the 
public  knows  it.  On  the  whole,  if  advertising  is  a 
disappointment  and  unfruitful,  it  is  because  the  ma- 
jority of  people  have  little  confidence  in  it.  Adver- 
tising is  not  only  a  great  science  in  itself,  but  an  im- 


LEARNING   TO    EARN 


portant  phase  of  business  and  a  natural  unit  in  any 
program  of  training  for  business. 

Without  wise  and  progressive  banking  facilities 
no  country  can  accomplish  very  much  of  conse- 
quence in  domestic  or  foreign  commerce.  Not  the 
least  important  reason  for  German  and  English 
prestige  in  South  American  markets  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  European  war  was  the  facility  afforded 
the  merchants  of  these  countries  for  doing  business 
with  German  and  English  banks  in  South  American 
republics.  In  the  United  States,  our  banking  facili- 
ties have  been  wholly  inadequate  and  quite  unrelia- 
ble. Moreover,  no  system  of  banking  will  of  itself 
prove  to  be  adequate.  Bankers  of  wider  vision  are 
necessary  to  the  success  of  any  system.  Banking 
is  a  distinct  vocation.  It  must  understand  the  needs 
of  business  and  be  prepared  to  meet  all  legitimate 
demands  which  business  may  make  upon  it.  Too 
frequently  the  banker  has  stifled  worthy  enterprises 
by  withdrawing  or  withholding  credit  at  crucial 
stages.  Too  many  business  enterprises  are  controlled 
and  attempts  at  operation  made  by  men  who  are 
merely  bankers.  Control  of  the  railroads  by  bankers 
accounts  for  much  of  their  present  trouble.  Bankers 
too  often  are  quite  ignorant  of  more  than  the  crud- 
est processes  of  operating  mercantile,  manufacturing 
and  transportation  enterprises.  Moreover,  their  ob- 
ject is  apt  to  be  concerned  too  largely  with  specula- 
tion rather  than  operation.  This  is  a  distinct  mis  for- 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        137 

tune  to  business  generally.  Bankers  either  possess  a 
narrow  conception  of  their  opportunities  or  they 
have  proceeded  into  spheres  with  which  they  can  not 
reasonably  be  expected  to  be  familiar.  Speculation 
is  ruinous.  Temporarily,  it  may  provoke  artificial 
results  that  seem  beneficial,  but  disaster  follows  in  its 
train.  Years  are  then  required  to  recover  what  was 
lost  and  what  might  have  been  gained  by  steady 
growth  and  wise  systematic  building. 

Business  is  interested  in  the  utmost  efforts  to  be 
made  in  behalf  of  conservation.  It  is  interested  in 
the  great  annual  losses  from  stream  pollution,  dam- 
ages from  fire  and  flood,  wear  of  machinery,  useless 
and  extravagant  advertising,  over-production  and 
over-buying.  Only  the  man  who  attacks  these  wastes 
systematically  can  ever  hope  to  eradicate  them.  We 
go  on  from  year  to  year  wasting  our  substance  be- 
cause we  do  not  have  men  capable  of  summoning  the 
strong  arm  of  science  as  a  preventive.  It  would 
be  an  important  aid  to  business,  may  we  not  believe, 
if  young  men  had  this  knowledge  brought  home  to 
them? 

Of  course,  the  whole  country  is  interested  in  the 
efficiency  of  business  because  efficiency  not  only  is  a 
problem  for  each  individual,  but  it  is  a  social  prob- 
lem of  vital  importance.  The  efficiency  of  business 
is  a  social  problem  because  society  is  becoming  more 
and  more  industrial  in  its  texture.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  the  inefficiency  of  business  is  responsible 


138  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

not  only  for  industrial  depressions  and  unemploy- 
ment, but  also  for  much  of  the  social  distress  at- 
tending idle  workshops  and  unemployment.  The 
efficiency  of  business  determines  very  largely  not 
only  the  status  of  seven  million  people  engaged  in 
the  managing  and  clerical  vocations,  the  status  of 
ten  million  wage-earners  in  manufacturing  enter- 
prises, but  also  thirteen  million  persons  over  ten 
years  of  age  engaged  in  farming. 

Nearly  all  the  great  European  countries  maintain 
elaborate  systems  of  commercial  education  for  the 
training  of  young  men  about  to  engage  in  business. 
Germany  has  more  than  twelve  hundred  commercial 
schools,  the  first  of  which  was  established  at  Cologne 
in  1897.  The  system  includes  several  hundred  con- 
tinuation schools  for  those  who  can  devote  only  a 
part  of  their  time  to  the  pursuit  of  education.  These 
continuation  commercial  schools  are  designed  for 
persons  from  thirteen  to  sixteen  years  of  age  and 
provide  a  simple  preparation  for  the  lower  commer- 
cial positions.  A  second  group  consists  of  higher 
commercial  schools,  equivalent  to  the  last  year  of  the 
American  high  school  and  the  first  two  years  of  col- 
lege. The  third  group  of  German  commercial  schools 
trains  for  the  highest  commercial  positions  and  the 
curriculum  is  merely  a  continuation  of  the  curricu- 
lum for  the  second  group.  Germany  also  maintains 
schools  for  the  training  and  education  of  those  ac- 
tive in  commercial  life.  The  predominant  feature  of 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        139 

the  German  system  of  commercial  education  is  that 
it  not  only  is  vocational,  but  cultural  as  well,  be- 
cause it  demands  the  "thorough  mastery  of  scientific 
subject-matter."  German  training,  «we  are  told,  y  .•* 
"gives  to  the  man  who  goes  into  a  trade^a  markedly 
different  attitude  than  is  given  him  by  Anglo-Saxon 
education.  With  us  the  business  man  finds  his  live-  ""7 
lihood  in  business,  his  life  elsewhere;  the  German 
finds  in  business  a  means  of  life  as  well  as  liveli- 
hood." 

In  the  United  States,  more  and  more  of  the  great 
universities  are  establishing  departments  of  business 
and  administration  but,  as  might  be  expected  with 
us,  the  work  is  not  organized  for  practical  applica- 
tion, and,  moreover,  we  have  a  vital  need  for  com- 
mercial education  of  a  secondary  grade.  True,  there 
are  many  commercial  high  schools  in  the  country 
and  nearly  a  half  million  students  receiving  instruc- 
tion in  commercial  branches,  but  half  of  them  are 
attending  private  schools  where  education  is  lacking 
and  training  is  only  primary.  We  need  a  complete 
system  of  education  for  business  that  will  begin  not 
later  than  the  first  year  of  high  school,  also  a  sys- 
tem of  continuation  and  part-time  schools  accessible 
to  young  men  forced  to  leave  school  at  the  end  of 
their  elementary  training  and  for  mature  workers, 
managers  and  executives. 

The  curriculums  of  the  business  departments  of 
the  universities  warrant  the  closest  scrutiny  that  they 


140  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

may  be  made  of  practical  benefit  to  the  young  man 
who  wants  to  pursue  a  business  career.  This  effort 
should  not  be  permitted  to  lapse  through  the  influ- 
ence of  men  who  are  classically  trained  only  and  who 
possess  no  native  sympathy  for  the  work  they  seek 
to  do. 

It  is  just  as  logical  that  the  universities  should  un- 
dertake commercial  training  of  an  advanced  charac- 
ter, as  it  is  that  they  should  maintain  special  courses 
for  training  journalists,  foresters,  architects  and  li- 
brarians ;  or,  lawyers,  physicians,  engineers,  dentists, 
preachers  and  druggists.  Business  is  proving  more 
and  more  attractive  to  young  men  educated  in  the 
colleges  and  universities.  This  is  true  despite  the 
fact  that  until  recent  years  they  have  given  no  es- 
pecial preparation  for  business  careers.  They  have 
maintained  thorough  courses  for  the  training  of 
ministers,  lawyers  and  physicians  from  the  begin- 
ning, yet  the  statistics  covering  thirty-seven  colleges 
and  universities  show  that  the  number  of  graduates 
entering  the  ministry  decreased  from  seventy  per 
cent,  in  1645  to  5.9  per  cent,  in  1900;  the  number 
of  graduates  entering  the  practise  of  law  decreased 
from  33.4  per  cent,  in  1810,  to  15.6  per  cent,  in 
1900.  Also  the  number  of  graduates  entering  the 
practise  of  medicine  has  been  decreasing  since  1825, 
when  it  was  13.4  per  cent.  In  1900,  the  number 
was  only  6.6  per  cent.  On  the  contrary,  there  has 
been  an  almost  unbroken  increase  in  the  number  of 


BUSINESS    AND    ITS    NEEDS        141 

young  men  entering  commercial  pursuits  since  1810. 
In  that  year  the  number  of  graduates  of  the  thirty- 
seven  colleges  and  universities  who  entered  com- 
mercial pursuits  was  only  4.8  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 
In  1900,  the  percentage  was  18.8. 

At  the  same  time,  the  number  of  graduates  of 
these  thirty-seven  colleges  and  universities  who  took 
up  educational  work  increased  from  3.1  per  cent,  in 
1790  to  26.7  per  cent,  in  1900,  but  it  does  not  appear 
nor  is  there  any  way  of  discovering  whether  this  in- 
crease is  due  either  to  increased  attractiveness  of 
educational  work  or  to  a  native  predisposition  to 
teaching.  There  is  a  strong  presumption  that  the 
increase  was  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that  young  men 
just  graduated  from  these  institutions  found  them- 
selves unable  to  earn  a  livelihood  in  any  other  way 
and  accepted  the  schoolmaster's  burdens  as  the  al- 
ternative between  a  precarious  existence  and  a  vo- 
cation they  did  not  particularly  like. 

However  that  may  be,  the  time  is  passed  in  this 
country  when  we  are  willing  to  concede  any  particu- 
lar social  distinction  to  the  man  because  he  happens 
to  be  practising  one  of  the  so-called  learned  profes- 
sions. We  are  not  so  much  deceived  by  the  halo 
which  tradition  has  placed  on  the  brows  of  Webster 
and  Everett  as  we  once  were.  They  were  successful 
lawyers  in  their  time  and  lived  in  an  age  when  the 
law  especially  led  to  public  service.  Lately,  we  have 
seen  men  from  all  walks  of  life  drawn  into  public 


142  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

service  and  perform  their  work  with  zeal,  patriotism 
and  efficiency.  This  alone  has  tended  to  dispel  the 
false  notion  that  distinction  in  public  service  may  be 
won  only  through  the  law. 

Education  for  business,  however,  has  a  more  prac- 
tical end  than  training  for  the  hall  of  fame.  It  ad- 
dresses itself  to  the  every-day  needs  of  the  manufac- 
turer, merchant,  transporter  and  banker  in  quite  the 
same  way  as  the  good  physician  goes  about  to  diag- 
nose and  treat  our  ills.  Its  mission  is  to  facilitate  the 
four  great  commercial  processes, — production,  prep- 
aration, distribution  and  consumption. 

To  be  successful,  education  must  be  analytical  in 
its  approach  and  comprehensive  in  its  attack  on  the 
business  man's  problems.  In  a  sentence,  its  purpose 
is  to  collect,  classify  and  distribute  through  the  voca- 
tional commercial  schools  and  other  public  agencies, 
the  intelligence  of  the  commercial  world. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TRAINING  FOR  THE  HOME 

Woman's  chief  vocational  interest  is  the  home — Effect  of  in- 
dustrial changes  on  the  work  of  the  home — Lack  of  a  scien- 
tific approach — Meager  efforts  of  the  schools  to  train  effi- 
ciently for  -the  duties  of  the  home  —  Variations  in  the 
curriculum — General  outline  of  training:  food,  clothing, 
fashions,  building,  house  furnishing,  sanitation,  the  garden, 
marketing,  care  of  infants,  common  remedies — Music  as  a 
vocation  and  an  incidental  interest — Education  will  lighten 
the  burdens  of  the  home. 

Home-making  is  a  profession,  a  business,  a  sci- 
ence, an  art.  The  most  profitable  education  for 
women  is  education  for  home-making.  It  is,  or 
ought  to  be,  also  the  most  interesting  avenue  through 
which  the  native  instincts  and  impulses  of  the  poten- 
tial wife  and  mother  can  find  expression;  the  center 
of  all  the  issues  of  the  woman's  life.  If  it  is  not  now 
so,  it  is  because  the  early  training  of  the  girl  and 
young  woman  fails  to  give  adequate  encouragement 
to  native  instincts  and  impulses.  It  is  because  pres- 
ent training  tends  to  disparage  rather  than  promote 
the  healthful  normal  growth  of  the  woman's  mind. 

Training  for  the  home  is  designed  only  tor 
women.  Not  all  women,  however,  become  home- 
makers.  Only  a  very  small  percentage  of  women  do 

143 


144  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

not — only  a  very  few  continue  self-supporting 
through  life.  It  is  probably  uneconomical  to  train 
young  women  for  trades  they  will  follow  only  three 
or  four  years.  Unless  a  young  woman  has  a  decided 
bent  for  an  industrial  or  commercial  occupation  and 
unless  she  determines  not  to  marry  and  rear  a  fam- 
ily, her  training  should  tend  to  equip  her  for  home 
duties  and  home  responsibilities.  In  this  case  she 
might  become  highly  proficient  as  a  seamstress,  as  a 
cook,  as  a  milliner,  as  a  nurse,  as  a  gardener.  If  she 
live  in  the  country,  she  might,  for  instance,  be  trained 
for  the  management  of  a  poultry  farm.  Indiana  has 
at  least  one  woman,  who,  without  any  considerable 
previous  knowledge  of  poultry,  paid  for  eighty  acres 
of  land  in  three  years  from  the  profits  of  poultry. 
If  a  sufficient  number  of  young  women  who  want  to 
follow  a  given  trade  permanently  are  to  be  found  in 
any  of  our  industrial  centers,  separate  trade  schools 
may  be  established.  Yet  it  would  seem  the  wise  part 
to  proceed  slowly  in  this  direction.  If  the  woman 
is  to  be  educated  for  any  particular  vocation,  then 
the  home  would  appear  to  be  both  the  logical  and 
sentimental  center  of  her  interest. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  at  this  point  that  the 
outlines  heretofore  set  forth  for  industrial,  com- 
mercial and  agricultural  education  apply  quite  as 
much  to  women  as  to  men,  and  that  women  who  are 
to  pursue  an  independent  career  are  quite  as  much 
in  need  of  scientific  education  as  men.     Moreover, 


TRAINING    FOR    THE    HOME       145 

the  educational  needs  of  industry,  of  business  and  of 
agriculture  for  trained  specialists  include  a  need_of- 
trained  women_j&orkers. 

The  part  of  a  successful  wife  and  home-maker  is 
more  important  than  that  of  the  woman  in  business 
or  the  industries,  because  in  the  former  capacity- 
there  is  dependent  upon  her  to  some  extent  the  finan^. 
jcjaLsuccess  of  the  marriage  relationship — the  happi- 
ness of  her  children,  her  husband  and  herself.  It 
has  been  said  that  the  wife  is  the  disbursing  agent  of 
the  marriage  partnership  and  since  it  is  doubtful  if 
marriage  can  be  a  well-rounded  success  unless  ijt  is  a 
financially  prosperous  partnership,  the  ability  of  the 
wife  to  get  the  largest  return  for  household  and 
family  expenditures  becomes  the  basis  of  marital 
happiness.  But  she  will  never  know  how  to  spend 
money  wisely  unless  she  is  thoroughly  trained  for 
all  the  departmenjts-oijhejioine^nji^ll-the  intricate 
aspects  of  home  life. 

The  character  of  the  woman's  work  in  the  home 
has  been  greatly  modified  by  our  industrial  revolu- 
tion. Formerly,  the  wife  expended  much  of  her 
energy  in  primary  production  of  commodities  con- 
sumed in  the  home.  She  spun  her  own  yarn,  wove 
her  own  cloth,  made  her  own  soap,  and  helped  to 
raise  her  own  food.  Now  most  of  the  commodities 
consumed  in  the  'home  *  can  be  purchased  more 
cheaply  than  they  can  be  produced  first-hand.  Never- 
theless, it  is  now  highly  necessary  that  the  wife,  act- 


146  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

ing  as  purchasing  agent  of  the  home,  should  be  an 
expert  judge  of  values. 

Present  training  is  not  even  calculated  to  make 
her  a  judge  of  values.  What  she  knows  of  this  char- 
acter must  be  got  from  her  mother  or  neighbors  or 
from  unfortunate  experiences  and  experiments. 
Every  department  of  the  home  has  a  scientific  ap- 
proach and  it  is  indispensable  that  each  department 
be  exposed  to  the  young  woman,  from  this  angle. 

No  other  institution  surpasses  the  home  in  oppor- 
tunities for  order  and  symmetry,  vision  and  beauty 
in  its  surroundings.  Why  have  women  failed  to  rec- 
ognize these  opportunities  ?  Why  have  they  failed  to 
seize  the  problems  of  the  home  in  the  spirit  of  the 
artist?  Simply  because  there  has  existed  no  agency 
for  pointing  out  and  unfolding  the  problems  in  their 
scientific  aspects.  The  day  laborer  performs  the 
drudgery  because  he  is  uneducated  and  untrained 
for  the  work  of  the  director  or  manager.  The  work 
of  the  wife  too  seldom  rises  above  the  sordid  tasks 
of  drudgery  or  reaches  the  dignity  of  a  science 
and  an  art,  because  the  wife  lacks  the  capacity  of  a 
household  scientist,  the  vision  of  a  household  artist. 

The  principal  business  of  the  woman  is  that  of  a 
home-maker,  because  a  large  majority  of  women 
marry  and  have  thrust  upon  them  the  responsibili- 
ties of  a  home.  And  while  the  marriageable  rate  for 
marriageable  women  is  higher  in  this  country1  than 


1  Census  of  1900. 


TRAINING   FOR   THE    HOME       147 

in  any  other  country  except  Hungary,  our  divorce 
rate  is  also  the  highest  in  the  world  except  Japan. 
In  the  whole  country  there  is  one  divorce  for  every 
thirteen  marriages,  but  in  certain  states  the  ratio  of 
divorces  to  marriages  is  much  greater.  In  Washing- 
ton, there  is  one  divorce  for  every  five  marriages. 
Moreover,  not  all  the  failures  of  marriage  are  re- 
vealed on  the  dockets  of  the  divorce  courts.  While 
unsuccessful  marriages  are  not  wholly  due  to  lack 
of  preparedness  of  the  wife,  they  are  partially  so.  If 
more  women  were  carefully  trained  for  the  respon- 
sibilities of  the  home,  probably  there  would  be  a 
wiser  choice  of  mates  and  better  results  of  the  mar- 
riage partnership  would  follow. 

The  public  schools  have  failed  very  materially  to 
contribute  to  the  successful  education  for  the  home. 
Elementary  schools  impart  little  information  of  use 
to  wives,  mothers  and  home-makers.  Very  little  more 
may  be  said  in  behalf  of  the  high  schools  and  col- 
leges. In  the  elementary  schools,  girls  learn  the  rudi- 
ments of  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic,  a  little 
about  world  geography  that  means  nothing,  a  bare 
outline  of  American  political  history,  a  mass  of 
meaningless  jargon  about  English  grammar,  none  of 
which  is  intelligible  or  usable,  and  a  few  discon- 
nected facts  about  human  physiology,  which  for  all 
practical  purposes,  might  be  the  physiology  of  some 
extinct  animal  of  the  antediluvian  age.  The  high 
school  and  colleges  merely  pursue  the  search  for 


148  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

facts  begun  in  the  grades,  facts  which  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  commonest  interests  of  the 
girl  after  she  has  become  a  woman. 

The  public  schools  have  done  little  to  arouse  a 
scientific  spirit  among  home-makers.  They  have 
taught  a  little  cookery,  a  bit  of  sewing  and  millinery 
and  so-called  arts  and  crafts.  But  there  has  never 
been  a  well-planned  system  of  education  for  the 
home,  no  well-rounded  curriculum  designed  to  train 
specifically  for  home-making  as  a  profession,  a  busi- 
ness, a  science  and  an  art.  Instruction  has  been 
incidental,  detached  and  variable  rather  than  sym- 
metrical, definite  and  concrete.  Home  economics 
so-called,  consisting  of  a  little  cookery,  or  a  little 
sewing,  or  both,  frequently  has  been  added  as  an 
appendage  to  a  curriculum  long  ago  obsolete  for 
the  time  it  would  serve.  It  has  seldom  or  never 
been  admitted  that  cooking  and  sewing  were  the 
beginning  of  a  thoroughgoing  transformation  of  the 
public  school  curriculum. 

Yet  they  are  the  beginning  of  a  sweeping  revolu- 
tion which  is  to  go  on  until  we  shall  hear  less  and 
less  about  the  history  of  decisive  battles,  the  func- 
tions of  the  medulla  oblongata,  the  twists  and  turns 
of  the  infinitive  and  participle,  the  deflections  of 
trade  winds  and  ocean  currents. 

Training  for  the  home  will  vary  according  to  the 
social  conditions  of  the  community  and  in  this  coun- 
try— a  melting  pot  for  many  peoples — somewhat  ac- 


TRAINING    FOR   THE    HOME       149 

cording  to  the  dominant  nationality  resident  in  the 
community.  It  will  vary  as  between  city  and  coun- 
try especially;  somewhat  less  between  an  industrial 
center  and  a  city  surrounded  by  an  agricultural  belt 
tributary  to  it.  Training  for  the  home  in  sections  of 
the  country  where  mining  is  the  dominant  industry 
will  not  call  for  the  same  curriculum  as  training  for 
the  home  in  the  school  of  a  fashionable  New  Eng- 
land village.  Yet  the  general  scheme  is  universal  in 
its  application. 

Training  for  the  home  will  have  to  do  specifically 
with  the  selection  and  preparation  of  food,  selection 
of  fabrics  and  the  making  of  clothing,  the  construc- 
tion, furnishing  and  care  of  the  home,  planning  and 
care  of  the  garden,  marketing,  the  care  of  infants, 
first  aid  to  the  sick  and  injured,  something  about 
physiology  and  hygiene  and  as  far  as  personal  tal- 
ents warrant,  at  least  a  limited  study  of  music. 

It  has  been  said  that  "half  the  cost  of  life  is  the 
price  of  food."  Undoubtedly,  this  truth  is  empha- 
sized by  the  growing  margin  between  retail  prices 
of  food  and  wages.  It  is  emphasized  further  by  the 
fact  that  an  increasingly  large  majority  of  the  popu- 
lation must  consider  the  economic  aspects  of  the 
food  supply.  With  economic  considerations  more 
and  more  pressing,  the  selection  and  preparation  of 
food  is  of  growing  importance.  It  is  the  daily  prob- 
lem of  getting  the  most  nutritive  food  for  the  least 
money. 


150  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

In  whatever  plane  of  society,  the  selection  and 
preparation  of  food  is  important.  When  the  eco- 
nomic significance  is  wanting,  the  biological  rises  to 
the  level  of  the  economic.  The  notion  prevails  that 
the  appetite  is  the  safest  guide  to  a  choice  of  foods, 
yet  in  this  day  when  the  appetite  has  been  perverted 
by  intemperance,  it  can  hardly  be  relied  upon  as  an 
index  to  proper  food  or  as  a  guide  to  health.  If 
every  one  enjoyed  normal  health  and  if  there  were 
no  economic  limitations,  the  appetite  might  be  de- 
pended upon  as  a  criterion  of  diet.  But  the  question 
of  diet,  we  now  know,  is  becoming  more  complex. 

Education  must  seize  this  problem  as  a  scientific 
fact  and  reveal  its  complex  phases  to  every  class  of 
society.  Training  for  the  home,  therefore,  must 
have  to  do  with  the  science  of  foods ;  with  the  struc- 
ture, composition,  texture,  flavor  and  digestibility  of 
meats,  the  composition  and  fuel  value  of  different 
cuts  of  meat,  the  comparative  food  value  of  meats 
and  fish,  and  practical  suggestions  in  regard  to 
different  methods  of  cooking;  the  food  value  of 
beans,  peas,  lentils  and  other  legumes,  fresh  or 
dried,  compared  with  other  vegetables  and  with 
animal  food;  the  place  of  eggs  in  diet  and  all 
possible  substitutes;  the  composition,  nutritive 
value  and  preparation  of  poultry  for  food;  com- 
position, digestibility,  nutritive  value  and  hygienic 
importance  of  potatoes,  sweet  potatoes,  beets,  tur- 
nips and  other  starch-yielding  and  succulent  root 


TRAINING   FOR   THE    HOME 


crops;  the  food  value  of  corn  and  corn  products; 
digestibility  and  nutritive  value  of  cereal  breakfast 
foods,  nuts  and  milk;  composition,  nutritive  value 
and  relative  economy  of  the  more  common  fruits; 
the  household  preparation  of  canned  fruits,  pre- 
serves, jellies,  etc.,  for  use  in  the  home  and  for 
market,  the  principles  of  canning  and  preserving, 
sterilization  and  the  use  of  utensils  in  canning. 

This  outline  is  merely  suggestive.  The  federal 
government  is  spending  vast  sums  of  money  in  ex- 
periments and  investigations  to  determine  what  are 
the  best  and  most  economical  foods  for  domestic  ani- 
mals. The  results  of  these  experiments  and  investi- 
gations have  been  translated  into  practical  informa- 
tion for  the  farmer  that  is  being  used  widely.  The 
federal  government  has  also  made  extensive  inves- 
tigations and  experiments  to  determine  the  relative 
value  of  human  foods.  Yet  much  of  this  informa- 
tion is  technical  and  tedious.  It  must  be  translated 
into  language  that  can  be  understood  by  the  average 
woman  and  incorporated  into  our  proposed  curricu- 
lum for  the  home-maker's  training. 

The  home-maker  must  understand  how  to  make 
simple  food  palatable  and  attractive.  "Cookery," 
said  a  seventeenth  century  writer,  "is  become  an  art, 
a  noble  science."  No  woman  can  realize  the  widest 
opportunities  of  cookery  unless  it  is,  to  her,  a  science 
and  an  art.  Few  women  will  regard  cookery  in  any 
other  light  than  as  plain  drudgery  unless  they  are 


152  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

trained  to  undertake  it  with  a  scientific  spirit.  If 
simple  foods  are  to  be  made  palatable,  serving  must 
be  attractive.  The  housewife  must  be  possessed  of 
a  keen  artistic  sense  if  serving  is  to  add  anything  to 
the  flavor  of  the  food. 

Training  for  the  home  should  include  a  thorough 
study  of  the  origin  and  process  of  manufacture  of 
all  fabrics  used  in  clothing,  as  well  as  a  complete 
mastery  of  method  of  making  practically  all  gar- 
ments. 

Cotton  is  the  commonest  and  cheapest  of  the  tex- 
tile fabrics.  Its  history,  the  sources  and  volume  of 
'supply,  cost  of  production  in  various  stages,  nature 
of  cultivation,  by-products  and  their  use,  its  process 
of  manufacture,  dyeing  and  uses  for  various  pur- 
poses, are  typical  of  the  study  that  may  be  made  of 
the  other  standard  fabrics,  wool,  linen  and  silk. 
"Weighing  silk,"  by  dipping  the  yarn  in  bichloride 
of  tin  before  dyeing,  is  a  process  that  every  woman 
should  be  able  to  detect  in  the  finished  product  be- 
cause silk  that  has  been  subjected  to  this  process  is 
practically  worthless.  Frauds  in  labeling  are  com- 
mon and  women  should  understand  their  legal  rights 
under  the  label  laws. 

Not  only  is  it  possible  to  have  cheaper  garments 
from  home  sewing,  but  they  are  certain  to  be  more 
durable  because  a  larger  investment  in  material  is 
possible  and  more  attractive  if  made  by  trained 
hands.     Moreover,  there  will  be  a  smaller  market 


TRAINING   FOR   THE   HOME       153 

for  the  shoddy  product  of  the  tenement  shops,  a  re- 
sult which  is  socially  desirable.  The  sewing-machine 
is  a  great  labor-saving  device  and  its  operation 
simple  enough  to  be  thoroughly  mastered  by  the  girl 
in  the  public  schools.  Drafting  patterns,  cutting  and 
fitting  are  separate  arts  which  may  easily  be  taught 
in  the  public  schools. 

At  some  time  in  their  lives  girls  have  a  keen  inter- 
est in  embroidery.  The  art  is  a  very  old  one,  primi- 
tive people  having  used  the  needle  in  this  way. 
Girls  should  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  history  of 
embroidery  and  be  taught  all  the  modern  stitches. 

Naturally,  girls  have  an  active  and  abiding  inter- 
est in  styles  and  fashions.  Few  know  anything 
about  the  history  of  styles — that  there  is  really  noth- 
ing new  in  dress ;  that  one  year  offers  merely  a  repe- 
tition of  something  that  has  gone  before,  with  slight 
modifications.  Girls  will  be  keenly  interested  in  the 
story  of  present-day  style  making.  If  they  really 
knew  more  about  the  source  of  styles,  to  which  the 
sex  is  said  to  be  a  slave,  perhaps  there  would  be 
more  creative  and  less  imitative  tendencies  among 
women. 

The  woman  is  the  chief  purchaser  of  clothing  in 
the  home  and  upon  her  rests  the  responsibility  of 
making  the  dollar  buy  as  much  as  it  will.  Foolish 
expenditures  in  clothing  are  due  principally  to 
ignorance. 

Construction  and  care  of  the  building  in  which 


154  LEARNING  TO  EARN 

the  family  is  housed  are  worthy  of  special  attention 
in  any  plan  of  training  for  the  home.  In  city  or 
country  we  see  gbout  us  everywhere  examples  of 
architecture  that  are  impractical,  offensive  to  the 
eye  or  wholly  out  of  harmony  with  their  surround- 
ings. In  the  first  place,  the  house  should  be  con- 
structed for  the  convenience  of  the  persons  who  are 
going  to  live  in  it,  and  within  the  financial  limita- 
tions *of  the  builder.  Styles  of  architecture  and  ar- 
rangement of  interior  necessarily  will  vary  as  be- 
tween city  and  country  and  as  between  different 
sections  of  the  same  city.  Young  women  should 
know  something  about  the  history  of  architecture 
and  the  rudiments  of  building  for  different  purposes 
and  at  varying  costs.  It  will  seldom  be  necessary 
to  sacrifice  beauty  for  convenience,  and  women  who 
are  to  have  the  care  of  a  house  should  acquire  the 
facility  of  joining  utility  and  beauty  in  planning  for 
house  building. 

The  selection  of  building  material,  plumbing  fix- 
tures, labor-saving  equipment,  especially  for  the 
kitchen,  and  the  ingredients  of  paint  properly  con- 
cern the  wife.  Left  to  the  husband,  these  things 
are  likely  to  depend  upon  the  snap  judgment  of  a 
multitude  of  dealers  whose  object  is  to  give  the 
least  for  the  most  money.  N 

When  young  women  are  taught  more  about  rela- 
tive values  of  house  furnishings,  there  will  be  a  far 
more  restricted  market  for  the  car-loads  of  cheap 


TRAINING    FOR   THE    HOME       155 

furniture  sold  one  year  and  fallen  to  pieces  the  next. 
This  is  true  of  all  house  furnishings,  but  especially 
so  of  furniture.  People  with  modest  incomes  should 
no  more  spend  their  money  for  unsubstantial  furni- 
ture than  any  other  class  of  people.  It  is  false 
economy  to  make  investments  of  this  sort. 

Home  furnishings  express  as  much  as  anything 
else  the  taste  of  the  individual.  There  is  little  place 
for  gilt  chairs  in  the  modest  home.  Pieces  of  plain 
lines  or  of  soft  willow  will  conform  more  nearly  to 
the  general  atmosphere  of  the  cottage  and  likewise 
be  more  durable  where  durability  is  an  important 
factor.  Curtains  of  plain  pongee,  scrim  or  simple 
muslin,  printed  in  various  bright  colors,  for  many 
purposes  are  more  desirable  than  clumsy  lace,  not 
only  because  they  cost  less,  but  because  they  appear 
to  better  advantage.  There  is  a  wide  range  of 
material  at  varying  costs  from  which  furnishings 
for  the  house  may  be  selected  and,  at  the  same  time, 
a  definite  scheme  of  harmony  and  beauty  preserved. 
Selection  of  wall  paper,  for  instance,  is  not  so  much 
a  matter  of  cost  as  it  is  of  taste,  one  of  consideration 
for  lights  and  shadows.  Woodwork  can  be  made  to 
harmonize  with  the  color  scheme  of  each  room  and 
enhance  rather  than  mar  its  beauty.  Practical  ex- 
perience, gained  in  the  school,  in  choosing  colors, 
shades  and  tints,  will  do  much  to  improve  the  cheer- 
fulness of  the  home.  Pictures  may  mar  the  beauty 
of  an  otherwise  attractive  room.     Certain  subjects 


156  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

are  adaptable  to  certain  rooms  and  good  prints  are 
now  so  inexpensive  that  ignorance  is  the  only  re- 
maining excuse  for  bad  taste  in  choosing  pictures. 
Rugs  are  generally  preferable  to  carpets  because 
they  are  easily  taken  up  and  cleaned.  Inexpensive 
rag  rugs  of  good  design  may  look  very  pretty  and 
they  are  preferable  to  the  cheaper  grades  of  carpet 
for  most  purposes  if  cost  is  an  important  item. 

Sanitation  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  expendi- 
tures as  it  is  one  of  ideas.  The  woman  who  has 
fixed  notions  of  sanitation  will  prefer  rugs  to  car- 
pets unless  she  is  able  to  clean  her  carpets  frequently. 
In  planning  the  house,  the  trained  home-maker 
will  provide  for  adequate  lighting  and  ventilation. 
In  the  country  there  must  be  special  provision 
for  disposing  of  garbage,  refuse  and  waste. 
Many  inexpensive  systems  are  offered.  The  young 
woman  should  know  what  they  are  and  their  rela- 
tive cost.  Private  waterworks  and  lighting  systems 
are  fast  coming  into  general  use  in  the  country  and 
their  cost  is  less  and  less  prohibitive.  They  make 
the  problem  of  rural  sanitation  more  simple  than 
ever. 

Girls  in  the  public  schools,  both  in  city  and  coun- 
try, may  be  taught  the  planning  and  care  of  the 
garden,  the  preparation  of  hotbeds  and  the  prep- 
aration of  common  vegetables  for  the  table.  Great 
saving  in  expenditures  for  vegetables  may  be  real- 
ized from  very  small  plots  of  ground  and  women 


TRAINING    FOR   THE    HOME       157 

are  likely  to  grow  many  vegetables  for  home  con- 
sumption if  their  interest  in  the  garden  is  aroused 
early  in  life.  Their  education,  in  this  respect,  will 
be  similar  to  that  of  the  young  farmer  for  agricul- 
ture. They  must  know  the  life  history  of  all  com- 
mon vegetables,  how  to  protect  them  from  common 
pests,  how  to  prepare  and  cultivate  the  soil,  artistic 
arrangement  of  vegetable  beds  and  when  to  begin 
to  cut  or  pull  the  vegetables  for  use.  Perhaps  young 
women  will  never  find  it  necessary  to  perform  any 
of  the  labor  connected  with  a  vegetable  garden,  but 
they  will  have  the  responsibility  of  supervision  in 
any  event. 

Likewise,  young  women  may  add  greatly  to  the 
attractiveness  of  the  home  surroundings  if  they 
have  a  live  interest  in  flowers,  trees  and  shrubs.  A 
few  young  women  will  have  a  native  interest  in 
these  forms  of  natural  beauty,  but  the  majority 
must  acquire  it.  The  maintenance  of  an  experi- 
mental school  garden  with  a  brief  study  of  schemes 
for  planning  will  widen  the  popular  interest  in 
beauty  for  beauty's  sake. 

Marketing  has  become  an  important  element  in 
the  prosperity  of  the  home.  We  have  a  clumsy  sys- 
tem of  bringing  the  producer  and  consumer  together 
and  until  radical  changes  are  made  in  the  system  by 
which  unnecessary  middlemen's  profits  are  elimi- 
nated, the  housewife  who  is  a  trained  buyer  and 
who .  understands  the  relative  cost  of  the  different 


158  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

items  that  enter  into  final  values,  will  be  able  to  get 
two  or  three  times  as  much  for  the  same  money  as 
the  untrained  and  indifferent  buyer.  Necessarily, 
marketing  has  to  do  with  the  selling  of  everything 
produced  in  the  home  as  well  as  everything  con- 
sumed there. 

From  three-fourths  to  four-fifths  of  the  family 
income,  according  to  Scott  Nearing,  is  spent  for 
food,  clothing,  fuel  and  light,  recreation,  health  and 
sundry  minor  items,  all  of  which  expenditures  are 
usually  made  by  the  wife.  The  importance  of  skil- 
ful buying  is  obvious.  Nearing  estimates  that  there 
is  a  minimum  of  ten  million  families  in  the  United 
States  depending  largely  upon  the  income  of  some 
industry  other  than  agriculture  and  producing  little 
or  nothing  for  home  consumption.  These  ten  million 
families,  he  concludes,  at  six  hundred  dollars  a  year, 
spend  annually  six  billion  dollars,  which  is  an  ap- 
proximate estimate  of  the  annual  buying  power  of 
women,  throwing  the  magnitude  of  marketing  into 
the  foreground. 

In  training  for  the  home,  the  public  schools 
should  work  out  the  unit  cost  of  delivery  systems, 
set  forth  the  legal  aspects  of  weights  and  measures, 
show  the  relative  cost  of  commodities  in  large  and 
small  quantities,  present  the  advantages  of  cooper- 
ative buying,  and  emphasize  the  importance  of  the 
budget  system  for  household  expenditures.  Market- 


TRAINING   FOR   THE   HOME       159 

ing  belongs  in  any  complete  course  of  training  for 
the  home. 

Nothing  is  more  vital  to  the  perpetuity  of  the 
family  and  the  happiness  of  the  home  than  the 
healthful  and  normal  development  of  the  young. 
Yet  few  mothers  know  very  much  about  the  scien- 
tific care  of  infants.  The  high  mortality  rate  of  in- 
fants can  be  traced  directly  to  the  ignorance  of  their 
mothers.  Young  wives  have  to  depend,  for  all  the 
information  available  about  babies,  upon  their  moth- 
ers and  friends.  As  a  source  of  information,  this  is 
both  unreliable  and  inadequate.  If  a  skilled  nurse 
can  not  be  employed,  the  baby  frequently  dies  as  a 
consequence  of  misinformation  or  no  information. 

Certainly,  young  women  who  expect  to  become 
mothers  have  a  native  interest  in  preparing  for 
motherhood  equal  to  that  which  leads  them  into  the 
formulae  of  higher  mathematics  and  the  forms  of 
French  verbs,  and,  as  Herbert  Spencer  says :  "When 
a  mother  is  mourning  over  a  first-born  that  has  sunk 
under  the  sequelae  of  scarlet- fever — when  perhaps  a 
candid  medical  man  has  confirmed  her  suspicion 
that  the  child  would  have  recovered  had  not  its  sys- 
tem been  enfeebled  by  overstudy — when  she  is 
prostrate  under  the  pangs  of  combined  grief  and 
remorse;  it  is  but  a  small  consolation  that  she  can 
read  Dante  in  the  original." 

Young  women  should  be  taught  what  food  in- 


160  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

fants  require  and  how  to  prepare  their  clothing.  The 
first  year  of  the  child's  life  is  the  most  critical  as  far 
as  its  health  is  concerned  and  its  feeding  requires 
especial  care  and  consideration  during  this  period. 
The  alimentary  canal  is  a  source  of  most  infant  ills 
and  if  the  mother  knows  how  to  keep  it  in  good  con- 
dition, little  trouble  of  another  nature  may  be  ex- 
pected; at  least,  during  the  first  year  of  the  child's 
life.  Fresh  air  is  important  to  infants  and  the  popu- 
lar notion  that  cold  air  is  harmful  to  babies  is  er- 
roneous. It  is  one  of  the  many  erroneous  notions 
about  the  care  of  babies.  Mothers  should  know 
enough  to  look  after  the  infant's  teeth,  the  nasal  pas- 
sages and  the  cultivation  of  proper  habits  of  breath- 
ing. Many  children  grow  up  with  deformed  teeth 
and  mouths  because  their  mothers  did  not  know 
how  "baby"  teeth  should  be  cared  for  to  preserve 
the  contour  of  the  gums  for  the  normal  growth  of 
permanent  teeth. 

The  common  remedies  for  the  commonest  of 
children's  ills,  the  mother  should  always  have  on 
hand  and  be  able  to  use  intelligently.  Young  mothers 
will  be  saved  much  unnecessary  worry  if  they  are 
familiar  with  child  psychology,  which  might  be  a 
part  of  any  comprehensive  course  of  training  for 
the  home. 

Wives  and  mothers  should  be  trained  to  admin- 
ister first  aid  to  the  sick  and  injured  and  be  familiar 
with  the  essential  equipment  for  extending  this  aid. 
A  brief  course  having  to  do  with  common  remedies, 


TRAINING    FOR   THE    HOME        161 

antiseptics,  liniments  and  gargles  and  the  treatment 
of  common  ills  can  easily  be  given  in  the  vocational 
schools. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  proposed  scheme  of  train- 
ing for  the  home  as  outlined  in  this  chapter  will  tend 
to  make  the  life  of  the  wife  and  mother  a  round 
of  dreary  monotony,  a  life  in  which  her  very  being 
is  submerged,  a  life  in  which  she  fails  to  find  expres- 
sion for  natural  instincts  and  emotions.  Not  at  all ! 
Such  training  will  have  precisely  opposite  effects. 
The  life  of  the  wife  and  mother  tends  to  become 
a  round  of  dreary  monotony  because  she  knows 
nothing  about  the  science  of  what  she  is  trying  to 
do.  She  seeks  expression  for  active  impulses  out- 
side the  home  because  those  impulses  have  been  di- 
verted from  the  home  by  a  "hocus-pocus"  educa- 
tional process  which  gave  her  a  smattering  of  the 
learning  that  used  to  be  housed  in  monasteries  and 
might  still  be,  as  far  as  the  interests  of  the  home 
are  concerned. 

With  no  desire  to  assail  the  activity  of  women  in 
the  so-called  "wider  sphere,"  voluntary  societies  and 
organizations  for  the  amelioration  of  this  evil  and 
that  wrong,  literary,  art  and  scientific  clubs,  it  seems 
quite  certain  that  this  activity  is  the  forced  expres- 
sion of  erroneous  training  in  the  public  schools, 
rather  than  the  expression  of  natural  impulses. 

A  multitude  of  responsibilities  patent  to  the  home 
are  apt  to  be  regarded  as  drudgery  merely  because 


162  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

they  are  performed  in  that  spirit.  Education  can 
correct  this  erroneous  spirit.  Education  and  train- 
ing for  the  home  will  lighten  the  home-maker's  bur- 
den because  they  will  add  new  angles  of  interest  to 
each  and  every  task  the  home  presents.  The  selec- 
tion and  preparation  of  food,  selection  of  fabrics 
and  the  making  of  clothing,  construction,  furnishing 
and  care  of  the  house,  and  marketing,  may  be  un- 
dertaken either  with  the  machine-like,  monotonous 
point  of  view  of  so  much  time  required  for  so  much 
exacting  labor,  or,  they  may  be  anticipated  with  the 
zest  of  the  scientist  who  is  seeking  some  new  econ- 
omy of  operation,  some  new  expression  of  beauty, 
some  new  form  of  perfection.  Training  for  the 
home  is  expected  to  develop  and  establish  this  latter 
point  of  view. 

Music  not  only  offers  a  pleasant  vocational  oppor- 
tunity to  women  who  have  a  talent  for  it,  but  it 
ought  to  have  a  place  in  scientific  education,  for 
modern  home-making  depending  largely  upon  indi- 
vidual tastes  and  talents.  Public  school  music  has 
wasted  too  much  effort  on  children  without  musical 
ability.  Home  education  may  well  avoid  this  waste 
by  proper  selection. 

Training  for  the  home,  as  a  necessary  function  of 
our  system  of  public  education,  may  be  summed  up 
in  the  language  of  the  Federal  Commission  on  Vo- 
cational Education:  "Preparation  for  the  varied 
duties  of  the  home  should  be  regarded  as  a  legiti- 


TRAINING   FOR   THE   HOME       163 

mate,  integral  part  of  the  education  of  every  girl; 
that  it  should  be  given  throughout  the  entire  school 
course,  both  in  elementary  and  in  high  schools ;  and 
that  it  should  be  considered  a  necessary  part  of  a 
girl's  general  preparation  for  life  no  matter  what 
her  particular  calling  might  be." 

Above  all,  education  for  the  home  must  avoid 
training  for  the  kind  of  home  in  which  people  do 
not  live,  training  for  experiences  girls  never  have. 
Altogether  the  program  is  a  serious  one  and  means 
infinitely  more  than  a  passing  fad  since  it  involves 
the  normal  development  of  the  finest  and  greatest 
graces  of  womanhood  as  well  as  the  comfort,  happi- 
ness and  security  of  family  life  in  America. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

VOCATIONAL  EDUCATION  AND  CONSERVATION 

The  waste  of  resources — Direct  losses — Indirect  losses — Min- 
ing —  Lumbering  —  Soils  —  Insect  pests  —  Animal  diseases  — 
Weeds — Lack  of  drainage — Agricultural  production  too  small 
— Export  raw  materials  instead  of  finished  products — Waste 
of  human  resources — Child  wastage — Preventable  diseases — 
Accidents  in  occupations — Diseases  of  occupations — Conserv- 
ing health  and  strength — Efficiency. 

The  extent  of  preventable  waste  in  the  United 
States  is  appalling.  The  figures  of  the  annual  losses 
stagger  the  imagination.  The  losses  due  to  failure 
to  produce  what  we  should  each  year  adds  to  the 
enormous  total  and  makes  one  wonder  whether  we 
are  not  in  the  realm  of  fiction.  It  is  probable  that 
the  total  preventable  loss  annually  from  all  sources, 
direct  and  indirect,  amounts  to  almost  one-third  of 
the  entire  value  of  the  property  of  the  country — or 
more  than  sixty  billion  dollars. 

We  have  been  living  in  an  age  of  exploitation. 
We  have  been  wasting  and  allowing  waste  of  our 
resources  like  drunken  sailors.  The  policy  of  taking 
all  that  could  be  got  without  regard  to  wise  use 
or  without  regard  to  the  economy  of  the  whole  has 
been  disastrous.  We  have  ruined  our  soils  and 
robbed  them  of  their  fertility  in  order  that  the  ex- 

164 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION      165 

ploiters  could  gain  the  highest  immediate  return 
without  putting  anything  back  on  the  land.  We  have 
mined  coal,  iron  and  other  minerals  with  criminal 
losses  due  to  the  greed  of  the  exploiters;  we  would 
mine  the  best  because  there  was  the  greatest  profit 
at  once,  even  though  it  meant  the  permanent  loss  of 
the  less  productive  veins;  we  have  permitted  insect 
pests  and  diseases  of  plants  and  animals  to  take  their 
toll  of  billions  while  the  knowledge  of  prevention 
lies  dormant;  we  have  allowed  a  fire  waste  which 
is  a  disgrace  to  the  nation  because  we  have  not  com- 
pelled the  application  of  extant  knowledge  and 
known  practise  to  the  art  of  building;  we  have  al- 
lowed our  farms  and  roadsides  to  fill  with  foul 
growth,  a  drain  upon  the  soil  and  a  hindrance  to 
productive  crops;  we  are  wasting  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  dollars  through  lack  of  education  in  the  care 
of  farm  machinery;  we  waste  other  millions  by  the 
inability  of  our  people  to  judge  the  value  of  their 
purchases  in  food,  dress  or  furnishings;  we  waste 
one  billion  dollars  through  inefficient  government; 
we  lose  billions  through  preventable  diseases,  and 
we  bring  untold  loss,  pain  and  misery  to  the  thou- 
sands who  are  needlessly  killed  and  maimed  in  our 
industries  every  year  or  who  suffer  from  preventa- 
ble diseases. 

At  the  same  time,  while  these  direct  losses  occur 
year  after  year,  we  indirectly  lose  many  more  bil- 
lions by  failure  to  produce  from  the  soil  all  that  we 


166  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

should  and  from  industry  all  that  it  is  capable  of  in 
material  things  and  human  happiness.  During  1914 
this  country  produced  nine  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
farm  crops.  Under  intelligent  treatment  there  is  no 
reason  why,  from  the  same  soil,  the  amount  should 
not  have  been  twice  as  great.  Millions  are  lost  for 
lack  of  irrigation  and  other  millions  for  lack  of 
proper  drainage. 

On  the  side  of  consumption  we  are  equally  waste- 
ful. Probably  one-third  of  all  expenditures  for 
food,  clothing  and  furnishings  is  an  outright  waste 
because  of  unsuitability  or  of  ignorance  in  prepara- 
tion. Uneconomic  expenditures — those  which  bring 
no  permanent  good — are  enormous.  The  annual  ex- 
penditure for  intoxicating  beverages,  tobacco,  chew- 
ing gum,  fancy  candies,  soda-water  and  other  soft 
drinks,  and  all  the  other  useless  expenditures  to 
which  our  people  are  accustomed,  amount  to  more 
than  four  billion  dollars.  The  use  of  such  articles 
is,  partially  at  least,  a  result  of  the  failure  of  society 
through  the  schools  to  train  in  habits  of  thrift  and 
wise  expenditure. 

The  losses  to  this  country  from  exporting  raw 
materials  to  Europe  to  be  sold  back  to  us  in  the^form 
of  finished  products  of  highly  skilled  workmanship, 
are  perhaps  our  greatest  economic  losses.  Mr.  H.  E. 
Miles,  in  a  recent  statement,1  said :  "We  export  cot- 


1  Hearing  before  United  States  Commission  on  Vocational 
Education,  Vol.  2,  p.  270. 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION       167 

ton  at  fourteen  cents  a  pound  and  buy  it  back  in  fine 
fabrics  at  forty  dollars  per  pound;  export  steel  at 
one  and  one- fourth  cents  and  buy  it  back  at  from 
two  dollars  and  a  half  to  ten  dollars  per  pound.  We 
should  make  all  these  more  artistic  goods  which  we 
now  import.  There  are  one  billion  five  hundred 
million  consumers  in  the  neutral  markets  of  the 
world  who  buy  crude  stuffs  from  us  in  considerable 
amounts.  They  buy  substantially  all  of  their  highly 
finished  products  from  England,  Germany  and 
France." 

It  is  commonly  stated  that  Germany  adds  four 
times  as  much  labor  value  to  goods  as  this  country. 
This  country  in  1909  manufactured  goods  to  the 
value  of  twenty  billion  six  hundred  seventy-two  mil- 
lion fifty-two  thousand  dollars,  of  which  twelve  bil- 
lion one  hundred  forty-one  million  seven  hundred 
ninety-one  thousand  dollars  was  represented  by  raw 
materials  and  eight  billion  five  hundred  thirty  mil- 
lion two  hundred  sixty-one  thousand  dollars  the 
value  added  by  manufacture.  With  skill  equal  to 
that  of  the  Germans,  twenty- four  billion  dollars 
might  have  been  added  to  our  manufactured  goods. 

One  of  our  greatest  losses  is  in  mining.  Van  Hise 
estimates2  that  for  every  ton  of  bituminous  coal 
mined,  a  half  ton  is  wasted  and  for  every  ton  of 
anthracite  coal  mined,  a  ton  to  a  ton  and  one-half  is 


aVan  Hise,  The  Conservation  of  Natural  Resources  in  the 
United  States,  pp.  17-47. 


168  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

wasted.  This  he  declares  could  be  reduced  to  twenty- 
five  per  cent,  and  even  to  ten  per  cent,  by  a  proper 
system  of  mining.  According  to  his  figures  nearly 
four  billion  tons  were  wasted  prior  to  1907.  He 
further  estimates  that  fifty  million  dollars  are  lost 
every  year  by  the  manufacture  of  coke  in  beehive 
ovens  instead  of  retorts.  On  top  of  this  loss  comes 
the  enormous  waste  caused  by  improper  combustion. 
This  loss  has  been  estimated  as  high  as  five  hundred 
million  dollars  annually,  and  it  is  a  wholly  needless 
loss.  Methods  are  known  by  which  coal  may  be  al- 
most perfectly  consumed.  The  amount  wasted 
through  ignorance  of  simple  methods  of  furnace 
practise  in  the  home  or  because  of  defective  heating 
apparatus,  is  also  a  large  factor  in  the  waste  of  re- 
sources. Our  smoke  nuisance,  with  all  of  its  attend- 
ant losses  and  discomforts,  is  a  direct  result  of 
ignorance  of  simple  furnace  practise.  Again  the  con- 
version of  coal  into  heat  and  light  through  the  steam 
engine  gives  only  a  small  fraction,  estimated  at  from 
one-fifth  of  one  per  cent,  to  one  per  cent,  of  the  heat 
units  of  the  coal. 

These  great  wastes  take  place  with  a  natural 
resource  which  is  itself  limited  in  quantity  and  is  be- 
ing rapidly  consumed.  The  facts  speak  the  impor- 
tance of  some  action  to  prevent  wanton  waste  of 
such  a  resource.  Some  results  can  be  accomplished  by 
direct  regulation  by  law,  but  far  more  lasting  results 
will  come  through  education  which  will  bring  about 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION      169 

methods  of  safe  and  economical  mining;  a  more  effi- 
cient furnace  practise  extending  to  every  house- 
holder who  stokes  a  furnace ;  the  development  of  the 
gas  engine  to  take  the  place  of  the  steam  engine ;  the 
discovery  and  utilization  of  more  efficient  metnT>ds^ 
in  the  development  of  energy  from  coal;  and  finally 
the  utilization  of  water  power  as  a  substitute  for  the 
heat  energy  of  coal.  Similar  conclusions  may  be 
drawn  in  the  case  of  iron,  zinc,  lead,  petroleum  and 
gas,  all  exhaustible  resources  which  are  being  un- 
duly wasted  in  mining  and  utilization,  together  with 
the  loss  of  by-products  such  as  arsenic  and  sulphur 
which  are  allowed  to  go  to  waste. 

The  questions  which  education  must  answer  are : 
How  can  waste  be  prevented  in  mining  and  handling 
mine  products?  How  can  mine  products  be  used 
with  the  greatest  efficiency  ?  What  cheap  substitutes 
may  be  used  in  place  of  the  rare  and  exhaustible 
resources?  These  problems  of  conservation  may  be 
solved  by  an  intelligent  application  of  knowledge  al- 
ready widely  and  successfully  applied,  but  informa- 
tion about  these  things  must  be  generally  diffused 
among  the  men  who  manage  small  as  well  as  great 
enterprises  and  among  the  men  who  do  the  simpler 
tasks  as  well  as  those  who  manage  the  larger  affairs. 
Education  for  efficiency  all  along  the  line  is  essen-l 
tial  if  conservation  is  to  become  something  besides  a  I 
name. 

Turning  now  to  forests  and  wood  products  we 


170  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

find  an  equally  enormous  waste  because  of  the  lack 
of  intelligent  application  of  knowledge.  Forests 
have  been  wantonly  destroyed  with  no  regard  for  the 
future  of  forest  growth  or  of  the  preservation  of 
the  soil.  Aside  from  the  wholesale  cutting  of  tim- 
ber, a  loss  of  fully  twenty-five  per  cent,  is  sustained 
by  careless  and  ignorant  cutting,  by  destruction  of 
young  growth  and  by  use  of  immature  trees  and 
lumber.  Louis  Margolin  estimates  that  about  fifty 
per  cent,  of  the  timber  is  wasted  in  milling,  some  of 
the  items  of  loss  being  bark,  thirteen  per  cent. ;  saw- 
dust, thirteen  and  five-tenths  per  cent. ;  slabs,  eight 
and  seventy-nine  hundredths  per  cent. ;  carelessness, 
three  arid  five- tenths  per  cent. ;  necessities  of  stand- 
ard lengths,  one  and  seven-tenths  per  cent.3  Much 
of  this  waste  could  readily  be  prevented  if  attention 
were  actively  directed  through  educational  means  to 
the  economic  losses  sustained  and  if  men  were 
trained  efficiently  to  do  their  work. 

In  addition  to  these  losses  come  even  greater  ones 
in  the  lack  of  intelligent  utilization  of  wood  prod- 
ucts. The  science  of  seasoning  woods  and  of  the 
use  of  preservatives  is  not  applied  extensively. 
Again,  the  lack  of  proper  manufacture  or  of  adapta- 
tion to  use  is  responsible  for  the  loss  of  hundreds  of 
millions  of  feet  of  lumber,  while  the  use  of  wood 
for  cheap  furniture  made  by  automatic  machinery 


8  Louis  Margolin,  "Waste  in  Milling,"  National  Conserva- 
tion Committee  Report,  Vol.  II,  pp.  547-580. 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION       171 

and  merely  stuck  together  is  one  of  the  most  shame- 
ful wastes  since  it  falls  most  heavily  on  the  poor 
who  purchase  it. 

Finally,  there  is  the  waste  of  by-products  such  as 
tar,  turpentine  and  wood  alcohol.  Taking  all  of  these 
facts  into  consideration,  the  loss  in  the  utilization 
of  wood  products  far  exceeds  the  amount  which  is 
utilized.  Add  to  the  losses  about  fifty  million  dollars 
annually  from  forest  fires  and  the  value  of  more 
than  twenty-five  billion  feet  of  timber  which  might 
be  saved  if  proper  care  were  given,  and  the  total 
positive  and  negative  losses  reach  the  enormous  to- 
tal of  more  than  three  billion  dollars  annually. 

The  soil  is  our  most  precious  possession,  devel- 
oped as  it  has  been  by  a  process  extending 
through  a  million  years.  To  rob  it  of  its  properties 
or  to  allow  it  to  be  carried  away  by  erosion  is  a 
crime  against  posterity.  It  is  ignorance  of  the  gross- 
est kind  when  we  permit  soil  destruction,  for  by 
the  simplest  methods  both  erosion  and  depletion  can 
be  prevented. 

Proper  selection  and  rotation  of  crops  restore 
many  of  the  elements  to  the  soil;  other  elements  are 
available  in  quantities  to  place  upon  the  land;  and 
others  by  utilizing  the  available  fertilizers  of  the 
farm.  Soil  study  for  purposes  of  conservation  is  a 
scientific  study  of  the  best  sort  and  brings  rich  mate- 
rial rewards. 

Likewise  the   application  of   knowledge  to   the 


172  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

problem  of  erosion  brings  practical  results.  By 
simple  methods  of  water  control,  deep  tillage, 
contour  plowing,  terrace  building,  forest  retention 
and  protection  of  fallow  lands  the  greater  part  of 
the  soil  which  is  constantly  being  carried  away,  will 
be  saved.  The  knowledge  exists,  but  it  is  not  gener- 
ally diffused  among  those  who  should  have  it  and 
employ  it. 

Turning  to  the  enemies  of  the  farm  we  find  that 
insect  pests  alone  in  one  year,  according  to  an  esti- 
mate of  C.  L.  Marlott  in  the  Reports  of  the  Conser- 
vation Commission,4"  caused  a  damage  of  fully  six 
hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars,  while  the  damage 
done  by  burrowing  animals  exceeded  one  hundred 
million  dollars.  The  amount  of  damage  caused  by 
plant  diseases  has  never  been  calculated.  Mr.  R.  A. 
Moore,  in  a  bulletin  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
estimated  that  the  loss  caused  by  smut  in  oats  in 
Wisconsin  alone  was  about  four  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  annually.  If  this  loss  prevailed  in 
other  states  in  the  same  proportion  the  total  loss 
from  this  disease  in  oats  alone  would  be  upward  of 
fifty-four  million  dollars.  This  disease  is  easily  pre- 
ventable by  soaking  seed  grain  in  formaldehyde  so- 
lution. Yet  how  many  farmers  know  this  and  how 
many  know  how  to  put  their  knowledge  into  prac- 
tise? Other  more  persistent  diseases  are  common 
such  as  rust,  and  all  of  the  energies  of  the  best  scien- 


*Vol.  Ill,  pp.  301-309. 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION       173 

tific  and  practical  minds  should  be  bent  on  discover- 
ing how  to  prevent  them  and  equally  great  energies 
should  be  spent  in  diffusing  the  knowledge  among 
all  men  so  that  the  knowledge  may  be  put  to  work 
to  play  its  part. 

The  loss  from  weeds  reaches  an  estimated  total 
of  five  hundred  million  dollars  annually.  Weeds  are 
useless  in  that  they  contribute  nothing  to  human  wel- 
fare; are  injurious  in  that  they  consume  water  and 
plant  food;  are  noxious  in  that  they  choke  useful 
plants  and  are  malignant  because  by  better  constitu- 
tions and  greater  persistency  they  dispossess  the  or- 
dinary cultivated  plants.5 

Our  lands  are  overrun  with  all  sorts  of  weeds  and 
our  highways  are  lanes  of  malignant  growth  which 
spread  rapidly  to  the  fields.  Again,  the  application 
of  knowledge  already  in  existence  will  lessen  if  not 
prevent  the  ravages  of  these  pests.  Nearly  every 
weed  pest  is  preventable  or  eradicable,  but  the  prob- 
lem is  to  get  the  knowledge  of  how  to  do  it  into  the 
service  of  every  man  on  the  farm. 

Still  continuing  this  catalog  of  losses  from  farm 
enemies  we  come  to  the  loss  from  animal  diseases 
which  probably  is  in  excess  of  five  hundred  million 
dollars.  Much  of  this  loss  is  preventable  by  existent 
knowledge.  But  such  losses  can  not  be  controlled  by 
knowledge  in  the  possession  of  the  few ;  they  can  be 


5  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Soils,  Soil  Erosion,  by  W.  J.  McGee.   Bui- 
letin  No.  71. 


174  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

controlled  only  when  practical  knowledge  of  their 
prevention  is  universal  among  farmers. 

Besides  the  positive  losses  in  agriculture  so  far 
mentioned  there  is  the  enormous  losses  due  to  in- 
efficiency in  practise  whereby  we  produce  fourteen 
bushels  of  wheat  per  acre  instead  of  thirty;  thirty- 
four  bushels  of  corn  when  it  should  be  sixty  to  one 
hundred;  ninety  bushels  of  potatoes  instead  of  two 
hundred,  and  other  crops  in  proportion.  The  soils 
of  European  countries  which  have  been  cropped  for 
a  thousand  years  bear  out  the  expectation  that  simi- 
lar results  should  be  expected  on  our  almost  virgin 
soil. 

Important  among  the  indirect  losses  which  we 
suffer  may  be  mentioned  that  from  our  failure  prop- 
erly to  drain  the  land.  Seventy-seven  million  acres 
of  virgin  soil  of  great  richness  could  be  added  to  our 
productive  area  by  easily  constructed  systems  of 
drainage  and  the  wide-spread  application  of  drain- 
age to  the  farms.  If  the  area  which  could  be  easily 
drained  were  drained  it  is  estimated  that  two  billion 
eight  hundred  forty-nine  million  dollars  would  be 
added  to  the  wealth  of  the  country,  and,  at  ten  dol- 
lars per  acre,  seven  hundred  seventy  million  dollars 
would  be  added  annually  to  the  nation's  product. 
All  this  does  not  take  account  of  the  millions  of  acres 
which  are  improperly  drained  and  which,  in  conse- 
quence, are  producing  only  part  of  what  they  should. 
Fully  one  hundred  and  fifty  million  acres  do  not 


EDUCATION   AND   CONSERVATION      175 

produce  within  twenty  per  cent,  of  what  they  should 
because  of  insufficient  drainage  entailing  a  loss  of 
two  billion  dollars.  The  results  obtained  in  many 
/  states  where  marked  beginnings  have  been  made 
prove  the  economic  results  of  drainage.  Missouri 
alone  has  added  ninety  million  dollars  of  taxable 
property  to  her  lists  in  the  last  twenty  years  by 
drainage. 

Too  much  importance  can  not  be  attached  to  edu- 
cation in  this  problem.  Drainage  is  not  a  mere  mat- 
ter of- knowledge  for  the  drainage  engineer.  Com- 
prehensive results  can  only  be  obtained  when  every 
acre  of  wet  land  receives  the  proper  drainage  and 
soil  treatment.  Every  farmer  having  wet  lands  needs 
to  have  a  practical  working  knowledge  of  the  prac- 
tise of  drainage. 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  the  tangible  losses 
in  material  things — the  waste  of  the  visible  natural 
resources.  Prodigal  as  we  have  been  with  those,  we 
have  been  still  more  prodigal  in  the  waste  of  human 
beings  and  in  the  destruction  of  human  resources. 
Man  is  held  as  our  cheapest  asset  probably  because 
his  value  can  not  be  measured  in  dollars  and  cents. 
Money  is  voted  freely  by  legislatures  and  congress 
to  fight  hog  cholera,  while  almost  in  the  same  breath 
measures  to  protect  human  beings  are  voted  down. 
Let  us  see  what  are  some  of  the  human  losses. 

Our  most  disastrous  human  loss  is  to  be 
found  in  our  waste  of  childhood.  Hundreds  of  thou- 


176  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

sands  of  children  die  in  infancy  each  year  through 
sheer  lack  of  education  in  their  care  and  other  thou- 
sands grow  up  with  weakened  vitality  and  physical 
powers  from  the  same  cause.  Little  children  are  per- 
mitted to  wear  out  their  bodies  and  kill  their  souls' 
in  wearisome  toil  in  the  factories  and  sweatshops  be- 
cause we  have  not  assumed  complete  charge  of  the 
guidance  and  protection  of  all  youth  until  their  phys- 
ical powers  are  developed. 

Professor  Irving  Fisher6  estimates  that  there  are 
six  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  preventable  deaths 
every  year  representing  an  annual  waste  of  one  bil- 
lion dollars.  He  further  estimates  that  there  are  al- 
ways three  million  persons  in  the  United  States  on 
the  sick  list,  about  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
of  whom  are  actually  workers.  The  aggregate  loss  is 
about  five  hundred  million  dollars.  Adding  to  this  an- 
other five  hundred  million  dollars  as  the  expense  of 
medicines  and  we  have  a  total  of  one  billion  dollars, 
one-half  of  which  is  preventable.  In  this  coun- 
try from  twenty-five  thousand  to  thirty-five  thou- 
sand men  are  killed  and  probably  half  a  million  in- 
jured in  industrial  accidents,  while  scarcely  a  school 
or  college  in  the  country  is  making  any  serious  ef- 
fort to  train  men  to  preyent  accidents.  Legislation 
is  enacted  to  compel  safety  devices  and  men  are  not 
educated  to  use  them.  Industrial  accidents  are  pe- 
culiarly due  to  lack  of  industrial  education  in  sim- 


National  Conservation  Commission,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  620-751. 


EDUCATION   AND   CONSERVATION      177 

pie  accident  prevention.  Men  can  not  be  protected 
in  industry  unless  they  are  taught  to  protect  them- 
selves. Although  most  industrial  accidents  are  pre- 
ventable their  occurrence  increases. 

Diseases  of  occupation  claim  their  toll  outright  by 
hunolreds  of  thousands  and  leave  their  works  of  dis- 
tress on  weakened  bodies  of  many  hundreds  of  other 
thousands  of  workers.  Yet  until  less  than  a  half  dec- 
ade ago  no  serious  study  of  causes  and  remedies  was 
made  and  prevention  was  attempted  only  in  the  most 
aggravated  cases,  such  as  the  effort  made  to  pre- 
vent the  manufacture  of  phosphorus  matches — the 
breeder  of  the  awful  disease,  "phossy  jaw."  Even 
that  was  not  finally  prohibited  until  1912.  When  the 
American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation  called 
the  first  national  conference  on  industrial  diseases 
in  June,  1910,  it  was  possible  to  mention  only  one 
attempt  to  study  occupational  diseases  and  to  note 
the  completion  of  an  investigation  of  only  one  in- 
dustrial poison.  That  practically  marked  the  extent 
of  serious  public  interest  in  occupational  diseases 
and  the  first  conference  attracted  attention  to  this 
as  to  a  new  problem.  Now  we  are  beginning  to  real- 
ize the  dangers  in  many  occupations  and  our  duty 
has  been  made  clear.  Men  have  a  right  to  work  in 
safe  and  healthful  surroundings,  yet  legislative  and 
administrative  fiat  can  not  secure  wholesome  condi- 
tions for  all  men  unless  all  men  are  educated  in  the 
prevention  of  industrial  accidents  and  disease.   Un- 


178  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

told  millions  have  been  wasted  by  industrial  diseases 
and  human  pain  and  misery  have  been  incalculable. 
The  principal  causes  of  industrial  diseases  are 
fourfold.  First,  harmful  substances  such  as  metal 
poison,  gases,  fluids,  dust,  organic  germs  and  irri- 
tants. For  the  reason  that  no  method  of  prevention 
has  been  applied,  thousands  of  workers  take  into 
their  systems  each  day  many  of  these  harmful  sub- 
stances, causing  both  temporary  and  permanent 
losses.  A  second  cause  arises  in  harmful  conditions 
of  environment,  such  as  excessive  temperatures, 
humidity,  air  pressure  and  light.  A  third  group 
comprises  injuries  due  to  occupational  strain  from 
excessive  work,  constant  application  and  to  the  posi- 
tions assumed  while  at  work ;  the  fourth  cause  arises 
from  the  effect  of  certain  materials  on  special  organs 
such  as  the  eyes,  ears,  skin,  nose  and  throat. 

"The  problem,"  says  Frederick  L.  Hoffman,  "is 
one  of  ignorance  rather  than  of  neglect.  Most  of  the 
factors  which  condition  health  and  safety  in  indus- 
try are  as  yet  very  imperfectly  understood,  at  least 
in  the  United  States.  We  have  not  as  yet  learned  in 
this  country  the  function  of  the  safety  engineer.  The 
function  of  the  ventilating  engineer  in  relation  to  in- 
dustrial requirements  is  practically  new  and  almost 
the  same  may  be  said  of  the  illuminating  engineer." 

To  offset  these  causes  requires  universal  educa- 
tion of  the  workers  in  self -protection  and  stringent 


EDUCATION   AND    CONSERVATION       179 

legislation  to  compel  the  best  possible  conditions 
under  which  to  work. 

More  broadly  must  the  question  of  bodily  strength 
be  studied  and  human  life  thereby  safeguarded.  The 
first  duty  of  vocational  education  is  to  train  in  self-, 
preservation.  The  worker  of  every  grade  should 
know  the  dangers  which  beset  him  and  know  how  to 
offset  them.  Longer  lives,  more  vigorous  bodies  and 
general  efficiency  result.  There  is  plenty  of  room 
for  improvement.  The  average  length  of  life  can 
be  largely  increased.  Such  increase  has  been  taking 
place  for  the  last  century  due  to  enlarging  knowl- 
edge. What  the  length  of  life  may  become  is  merely 
a  matter  of  conjecture,  but  if  it  reaches  merely  the 
average  attained  in  Sweden  of  over  fifty-two  years, 
it  will  mean  the  adding  of  several  years  of  product- 
iveness to  the  whole  people. 

In  broad  vocational  education  will  be  found  one 
of  the  chief  methods  of  conserving  health  and  length- 
ening life.  A  proper  training  for  a  life  work  carries 
with  it  a  training  in  the  conditions  which  affect  the 
health  and  safety  of  the  workers.  Of  fundamental 
importance  is  the  training  which  analyzes  the  dan- 
gers to  health,  the  occurrence  of  accidents,  and 
teaches  the  methods  of  eliminating  one  and  avoiding 
the  other.  But  of  almost  equal  importance  is  the  edu- 
cation which  teaches  how  to  do  things  efficiently  with 
the  least  amount  of  human  effort.  Many  men  put 
great  effort  in  doing  things  which  an  intelligent  ap- 


180  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

plication  of  efficiency  methods  would  make  unneces- 
sary. Human  energy  is  thus  wasted  in  useless  things. 
The  man  with  the  shovel  puts  more  effort  into  his 
work  than  he  should  because  he  is  seldom  taught 
how  to  use  his  strength  to  the  best  effect.  He  does 
not  know  the  efficiency  possibilities  of  the  tools  with 
*y  which  he  works,  and  his  shovel  may  be  poorly 
^  adapted  to  the  handling  of  the  material  upon  which 
he  is  working.  An  adjustment  of  the  size  of  the  tool 
to  the  character  of  materials  handled  is  the  first  prin- 
ciple of  efficiency  in  this  field,  and  every  man  who 
works  should  be  taught  that  principle  and  how  to 
apply  it  in  varied  practise.  Of  equal  importance  is 
the  condition  in  which  tools  are  kept.  Strength  is 
wasted  in  trying  to  work  with  dull  saws,  chisels, 
shovels  or  hoes,  yet  few  men  are  trained  to  over- 
come their  difficulties  even  of  the  simplest  character 
and  work  on  without  knowing  the  cause  of  small  ac- 
complishments from  hard  labor. 

The  science  of  position  while  at  work  has  become 
such  an  important  matter  to  the  health  and  strength 
of  workers  that  the  recently  formed  American  Pos- 
ture League  is  devoting  its  entire  energies  to  a  study 
of  the  effects  of  the  position  assumed  by  workers 
while  working,  looking  toward  the  end  of  training 
for  health,  safety  and  efficiency. 

The  problem  of  vocational  education  as  it  relates 
to  conservation,  should  comprehend  the  broadest  ef- 
forts for  human  welfare.   All  of  our  efforts  to  pro- 


EDUCATION    AND    CONSERVATION       181 

duee  more  and  to.  conserve  the  fruits  of  production 
should  be  directed  to  the  one  end  of  human  happi- 
ness and  the  distribution  of  well-being  to  the  broad- 
est extent.  In  order  that  production  may  rise  through 
efficient  methods,  waste  be  prevented,  human  effort 
be  made  to  produce  the  most  with  the  least  energy, 
and  the  widest  distribution  of  the  fruits  of  produc- 
tion be  possible,  there  will  need  to  be  universal  edu- 
cation of  all  people  in  every  walk  of  life  in  order 
that  they  may  produce  more,  conserve  more  and 
enjoy  more. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING 

Elementary  education  most  important — Acquiring  tools  of 
knowledge — Education  should  function  in  daily  life — Child 
who  does  not  keep  up  is  not  abnormal,  only  different — Cor- 
relation of  studies — Elements  of  more  things  should  be  util- 
ized— Practical  arts  should  be  compulsory  to  all — Wasted 
years  from  fourteen  to  sixteen — Prevocational  courses  to  fill 
the  gap — Not  only  vocational  but  also  guidance  courses  to  be 
given. 

Thus  far  in  this  volume  we  have  tried  to  focus 
attention  upon  the  needs  of  the  masses  of  workers 
in  useful  employments,  and  to  point  out  wherein  so- 
ciety fails  to  meet  them  through  the  present  educa- 
tional system.  We  shall  now  attempt  to  set  forth  a 
scheme  of  education  which  will  at  least  offer  the  op- 
portunity to  all  individuals  to  adjust  themselves  to 
their  environment  and  to  make  such  readjustments 
as  social  and  economic  progress  may  require  6r  in- 
dividual ambition  may  seek. 

The  foundations  of  such  a  scheme  are  laid  in  the 
elementary  schools  and  we  shall  first  address  our- 
selves to  a  discussion  of  the  scope  and  purpose  of  ele- 
mentary and  prevocational  education  covering  the 
period  from  six  to  sixteen  years  of  age.  It  is  gen- 
erally accepted  that  this  period  of  a  child's  life 

182 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       183 

should  be  directed  to  education  of  such  a  character 
as  will  put  him  in  possession  of  the  tools  of  knowl- 
edge, give  him  a  sympathetic  attitude  toward  his  en- 
vironment and  develop  sound  habits  of  study  and 
moral  action.  It  is  coming  to  be  recognized  that  a 
fourth  purpose  should  be  added,  namely,  to  give  vo- 
cational direction.  Compulsory  education  laws  set 
aside  the  years  from  eight  to  fourteen  for  school 
work  by  compelling  children  to  go  to  school  during 
the  time  the  school  is  in  session.  Having  thus  forci- 
bly assumed  the  burden  of  the  educational  guidance 
of  youth,  it  becomes  a  solemn  obligation  of  the  state 
to  see  that  the  education  forced  upon  the  child  is  of 
such  a  kind  as  will  be  suited  to  the  welfare  of  each 
and  every  individual.  Obviously  it  is  unjust  to  force 
upon  any  one,  old  or  young,  an  education  unfitted  to 
his  capacity  and  unsuited  to  his  needs,  and  from 
which  he  can  not  profit.  Such  education  is  neither 
individually  nor  socially  efficient. 

At  present,  a  larg*  proportion  of  youth  leave 
school  at  or  before  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  their 
further  education  ceases.  Much  of  this  defection  is 
due  to  the  failure  of  the  school  to  reach  the  children 
in  such  a  way  as  to  make  education  function  in  their 
daily  lives.  "I  hate  school"  is  a  common  expression 
and  unhappily  the  expression  is  translated  into  ac- 
tion about  as  soon  as  the  law  allows.  A  few  who 
seem  to  have  the  power  of  learning  the  things  of  the 
book,  are  counted  successful,  are  praised  by  their 


184  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

teachers,  advanced  from  grade  to  grade,  and  grad- 
uated finally  amid  the  approval  of  their  friends.  To 
them,  education  has  appealed,  because  they  were  suc- 
cessful. Whether  it  was  real  efficient  education  mat- 
ters not.  Probably  in  most  cases  it  has  functioned 
with  the  real  life  of  the  child  no  more  snugly  than  it 
did  with  the  life  of  the  child  who  hated  it,  but  it  was 
more  easily  grasped  as  an  abstraction.  The  child 
who  left  school  along  the  way,  humiliated  or  perhaps 
disgraced,  may  have  had  the  potential  power  for 
splendid  progress  in  a  different  course  of  study  or 
under  a  more  practical  method  of  teaching.  It  should 
be  emphasized  that  it  is  the  duty  of  society  to  make 
its  educational  service  a  reality  to  all  the  children 
and  not  a  sifting  process  by  which  the  ones  with  par- 
ticular powers  are  separated  from  the  mass  and  are 
given  advantages  in  their  lines  which  are  denied  to 
others  who  have  other  powers. 

In  organizing  the  schools  for  the  elementary 
period  of  education  from  six  to  fourteen,  some  defi- 
nitely known  facts  must  be  kept  in  mind.  First,  that 
at  present  the  great  mass  of  children  drop  out  of 
school  at  the  earliest  possible  moment;  second,  that 
little  effective  service  has  been  done  by  the  school  for 
these  children  to  give  power  to  protect; themselves, 
to  earn  a  living,  to  act  the  part  of  efficient  citizens,  or 
home-makers,  or  to  appreciate  the  higher  things  of 
life;  third,  that  these  powers  are  less  effectively  im- 
parted to  those  whom  we  are  able  to  retain  in  school 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       185 

to  the  higher  grades  than  they  should  be;  fourth, 
that  the  great  mass  of  our  youth  will  permanently 
earn  their  living  with  their  hands  and  derive  their 
appreciations  from  modest  surroundings.  These  facts 
suggest  the  problem — How  to  keep  the  child  in 
school  until  at  least  effective  rudiments  of  a  real  edu- 
cation are  imparted ;  how  to  give  possession  to  every 
child  of  the  tools  of  knowledge;  how  to  make  edu- 
cation function  with  the  every-day  life  of  all  the 
children ;  and  lastly,  how  so  to  organize  our  plan  that 
while  giving  the  elements  of  a  real  education  to 
every  one,  the  inspiration  to  the  highest  mental  at- 
tainments of  the  few  may  not  be  weakened. 

It  is  apparent  that  the  first  duty  of  the  educational 
authorities  is  to  analyze  the  causes  for  the  abnormal 
defection  from  school  in  the  early  years.  Something 
is  decidedly  wrong  when  such  a  condition  exists.  The 
main  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  It  is  found  in  the  rigid 
course  of  study  which  takes  little  account  of  the  dif- 
ferent interests  and  aptitudes  of  the  children  and 
seeks  to  impose  one  set  of  "things  of  the  mind." 
Each  child  responds  to  a  particular  motive  for  study 
and  as  nearly  as  possible  that  motive  should  be  dis- 
covered and  utilized.  We  see  many  examples  of  the 
enthusiasm  with  which  those  few  students  work 
whose  motives  for  study  coincide  with  the  work  of 
the  school.  We  must  give  to  all  a  similar  enthusiasm 
by  a  wider  utilization  of  motives. 

Educators  need  to  recognize  that  a  child  is  not  ab- 


186  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

normal  because  he  does  not  keep  pace  with  the  book 
education.  Rather  it  is  the  child  who  does  keep  pace 
that  is  abnormal.  As  expressed  by  Arthur  D.  Dean : 

"The  child  who  can  make  his  grades  year  by  year 
without  stumbling;  who  can  successfully  cover  a 
course  of  study  unrelated  to  his  experience  and  apart 
from  his  environment ;  who  can  be  trained  by  mem- 
orizing the  other  fellow's  doings,  is  after  all  a  most 
unusual  and  even  abnormal  child.  It  is  a  natural 
heritage  of  the  race  to  make  things,  to  grow  things, 
to  live  with  living  things.  Contact  with  nature 
should  be  expressed  in  the  educative  process  of  all 
children.  The  progressive  believes  that  the  child 
who  can  go  to  school,  study  from  books  alone,  shut 
his  eyes  to  all  but  the  printed  page,  and  his  ears  to 
all  but  the  voice  of  the  teacher  is  as  abnormal  a 
creature  as  any  of  the  freaks  which  we  pay  admis- 
sion to  see,  and  the  worst  of  it  is  the  better  he  does 
these  things  the  more  truly  unusual  and  abnormal 
he  is."1 

In  the  elementary  schools  the  first  object  should 
be  to  give  possession  of  the  tools  of  knowledge.  Ev- 
ery child  needs  to  learn  to  read,  write,  cipher  and 
compose ;  not  however,  as  ends  in  themselves,  but  as 
means  to  real  education.  These  are  fundamental  vo- 
cational studies.  They  relate  to  the  necessities  of 
daily  life.  Progress  can  not  be  made  without  them 
and  by  some  means  or  other,  children  must  be  kept 


1  Arthur  D.  Dean,  The  Progressive  Element  in  Education. 
Address,  Alfred  University,  1913. 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       1S7 

in  school  long  enough  to  make  these  subjects  a  part 
of  their  very  being. 

The  right  handling  of  these  subjects  will  prove 
one  of  the  means  of  overcoming  some  of  the  indif- 
ference of  children  toward  school.  These  subjects 
can  all  be  so  woven  into  the  child's  life  that  his  in- 
terest will  be  quickened  and  instead  of  dead  un- 
meaning sentences  in  reading,  hard  problems  in  fig- 
ures, measured  expression  in  writing  or  stereotyped 
composition,  there  will  be  a  vivifying  motive  for 
study  and  an  inspirational  result.  Throughout  the 
years  of  the  elementary  school  these  studies,  rightly 
conducted,  give  the  child  the  life  interest  which  he 
needs  and  a  wide  range  of  vocational  knowledge. 
Through  reading,  the  child  can  be  put  into  harmon- 
ious relation  with  his  surroundings.  For  this  pur- 
pose, reading  should  be  socialized.  That  which  the 
child  reads  should  be  such  as  he  can  connect  with  his 
own  experience.  It  should  be  less  about  kings,  war- 
riors, statesmen  or  politicians,  and  more  about  the 
simple  processes  of  peaceful  life  and  industry.  Bi- 
ography offers  much  for  reading,  but  it  should  be 
treated  in  a  broad  way.  The  biography  of  simple 
virtue  has  in  it  as  much  of  human  interest  as  the 
biography  of  glamour.  The  biography  of  successful 
farmers,  home-makers,  mechanics,  electricians,  car- 
penters, and  the  inspiration  of  their  rise  should  be 
given  prominence.  The  biographies  of  great  men 
ought  to  take  account  of  their  quiet  virtues  and 


188  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

works.  Washington  and  Jefferson  as  farmers  or 
Franklin  as  an  electrician  are  too  often  forgotten  by 
their  political  biographers. 

Reading,  composition  and  arithmetic  offer  endless 
chances  to  make  the  school  function  with  life.  These 
subjects  which  are  now  formal  and  barren  may  be 
made  rich  with  educational,  vocational  and  civic  in- 
terests. Through  them  the  children  may  develop 
sound  habits  of  thought  and  a  sympathetic  relation 
with  their  environment  and  wide  vocational  inter- 
ests. Mathematics  also  furnishes  the  possibilities  of 
a  by-product  in  vocational  and  civic  results,  which 
are  all  too  little  utilized.  Problems  drawn  from  ex- 
periences with  things  will  give  a  working  knowledge 
about  the  farm,  shop,  or  home,  measurements  of 
lands,  composition  of  fertilizers  or  feeding  stuff, 
and  the  many  operations  on"the  farm.  These  offer  a 
field  for  practical  application  of  mathematics  which 
will  give  vocational  direction  and  practical  power. 
Likewise  the  working  .out  of  the  designs  in  the  shop 
or  the  problems  of  the  home,  offers  a  laboratory  in 
which  a  practical  meaning  is  furnished  for  every 
problem.  Surely  nothing  is  lost  when  these  ends  are 
attained. 

As  an  instrument  for  the  teaching  of  civics, 
mathematics  is  equally  efficient.  Let  the  teacher  draw 
her  problems  from  the  administration  of  the  town, 
township,  county,  city,  state  and  nation  and  while 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       189 

teaching  the  use  of  figures,  actually  teach  the  pupils 
to  use  them  as  they  are  used  in  every-day  life.  Let 
the  pupils  determine  the  assessment  roll  and  tax 
rates,  the  cost  of  government  and  the  balance  sheet. 
Let  them  work  out  problems  which  daily  trouble  the 
public  officials,  thus  making  the  lessons  a  review  of 
current  affairs.  If  this  results  only  in  some  original 
thinking  and  discovery  of  new  problems  by  the 
pupils,  its  chief  end  will  be  attained. 

What  has  been  said  concerning  reading  and  arith- 
metic applies  equally  to  composition.  The  pupils 
ought  to  write  about  things  which  have  for  them  a 
living  interest.  They  should,  therefore,  find  their 
subjects  in  their  experience.  Composition  will  have 
fewer  terrors  when  the  children  tell  in  their  own 
simple  language  about  real  things  which  they  have 
seen  and  experienced,  instead  of  trying  to  draw  their 
subjects  from  the  realms  of  fancy  and  their  descrip- 
tions from  other  persons'  mouths.  Descriptions  of 
animals,  plants,  implements  and  simple  processes 
which  they  know  about,  promote  originality  and  en- 
courage clear  thinking. 

The  period  of  the  child's  life  here  under  discus- 
sion, being  devoted  to  general  education  and  being 
the  only  preparation  for  life  which  thousands  of  our 
youth  will  have,  should  cover  the  essentials  which 
are  necessary  to  bring  the  child  into  harmony  with 
his  environment  by  a  general  knowledge  of  the  tools 


190  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

fey  which  further  education  may  be  acquired,  and  by 
acquainting  the  child  with  the  data  of  his  surround- 
ings. 

Throughout  the  period  up  to  fourteen,  the  practi- 
cal arts  should  be  woven  into  the  work  of  the  school 
for  two,  reasons :  first,  that  through  them  the  data 
of  education  may  be  more  effectively  grasped,  and 
second,  because  complete  education  means  education 
of  all  the  faculties  of  body  and  mind.  From  mere 
play  exercises  in  the  early  grades,  this  work  should 
increase  in  definiteness  until  in  the  upper  grades  it 
becomes  well  organized  in  manual  training,  domestic 
science  or  agriculture.  In  all  cases,  however,  practi- 
cal arts  should  be  utilized  in  the  elementary  school  as 
a  part  of  the  general  education  of  the  young.  They 
are  not  ends  in  themselves  at  this  period,  but  rather 
means  of  developing  the  personality  of  the  child; 
affording  new  means  of  expression;  acquainting 
with  every-day  processes ;  promoting  accuracy  and 
a  sounder  notion  of  the  dignity  of  work,  and  begin- 
ning vocational  guidance.  There  will  be,  of  course, 
a  large  by-product  of  vocational  knowledge  and  skill 
developed,  which  may  serve  as  the  impetus  for  fur- 
ther training,  but  the  emphasis  should  be  upon  it 
primarily  as  a  factor  in  the  complete  education  of 
youth. 

Clearness  of  reasoning,  and  sanity  of  discussion 
will  be  promoted  if  this  purpose  of  practical  arts 
teaching  for  children  under  fourteen  is  kept  steadily 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       191 

in  view.  On  the  one  hand,  the  violence  with  which 
certain  people  denounce  practical  studies  will  be  tem- 
pered when  their  function  as  a  means  to  general  edu- 
cation is  understood  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  criti- 
cism of  those  persons  who  look  upon  such  work 
solely  as  a  preparation  for  a  vocation  to  fit  children 
to  earn  a  living  will  appear  ridiculous.  The  failure 
to  understand  the  true  function  of  practical  arts  and 
properly  to  correlate  manual  training,  domestic  sci- 
ence and  agricultural  work  with  reading,  writing, 
arithmetic  and  composition,  has  discredited  these 
activities  of  the  schools  and  left  unrealized  the  pos- 
sibilities of  practical  arts  as  an  ally  of  efficient, 
general  and  prevocational  education. 

Practical  arts  studies,  rightly  conducted,  vitalize 
the  school  work,  infuse  new  desires  and  induce 
greater  interest  in  other  subjects.  Such  studies 
should  therefore  be  compulsory.  They  are  designed 
for  all  pupils  no  matter  what  their  prospects  in  life 
may  be.  To  some  they  will  mean  the  arousing  of  vo- 
cational inclinations;  to  others  they  will  mean  a 
wider  sympathy  with  their  economic  and  social  en- 
vironment; for  others  they  will  serve  as  a  "try-out" 
or  vocational  finding  course.  Whether  a  youth  is  to 
be  a  lawyer,  physician  or  clergyman,  or  whether  he  is 
to  go  into  the  ranks  of  the  factory  or  trade  or  farm 
workers,  the  practical  arts  can  not  fail  to  be  helpful 
in  his  work.  It  will  give  as  its  best  result  a  broader, 
more  intelligent  and  sympathetic  citizenship. 


192  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

What  may  be  accomplished  by  a  correlation  of 
practical  arts  with  the  formal  studies  of  the  school 
is  limited  only  by  the  originality  of  the  teacher  and 
pupils.  Problems  in  percentage,  interest,  profit  and 
loss,  and  measurements  are  made  real  and  attractive 
to  children  when  drawn  from  the  things  actually 
constructed  by  them,  while  composition  loses  its  ter- 
rors when  children  describe  the  familiar  work  of 
their  own  hands. 

The  extremely  formal  method  of  teaching  which 
has  generally  prevailed  is  responsible  for  the  narrow- 
ness of  the  educational  curriculum.  Subjects  have 
been  taught  in  compartments  sealed  tight  to  exclude 
a  view  of  other  subjects.  Each  is  taught  as  an  end  in 
itself  and  not  as  a  part  of  a  coordinate  whole,  while 
the  simplest  elements  of  some  vitally  important 
subjects  are  entirely  ignored.  Processes  in  arith- 
metic which  never  will  come  within  the  range  of  a 
person's  experience  are  diligently  taught  while  the 
simplest  elements  of  chemistry,  biology  and  physics 
are  never  touched  upon,  although  these  elements  cor- 
relate with  every-day  experiences,  and  offer  a  fund 
of  educational  data.  Many  subjects  of  elemental  use 
to  every  person  are  themselves  formalized  and  put 
into  the  curriculum  in  the  same  sealed  compartment 
fashion,  but  usually  at  such  a  late  period  as  to  put 
them  beyond  the  reach  of  the  majority  of  youth  who 
do  not  reach  the  advanced  grades. 

The  problem  of  elementary  education  is  to  broaden 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       193 

its  scope  while  limiting  its  extent.  The  solution 
lies  in  a  complete  revamping  of  the  courses,  and 
a  rewriting  of  text-books  so  that  the  elements  of 
many  things  which  the  student  should  learn  will  be 
grouped  around  the  fundamentals.  The  course  need 
not  be  lengthened.  In  fact,  there  is  no  reason  why 
the  fundamentals  may  not  be  imparted  in  six  years, 
thus  ending  the  elementary  period  at  twelve. 

The  Committee  of  the  National  Educational  As- 
sociation on  Economy  of  Time  in  Education,  de- 
clared strongly  for  a  shorter  course  of  elementary 
education  and  pointed  the  way  to  it. 

"The  committee  agree  that  there  is  much  waste  in 
elementary  education,  and  that  the  elementary 
period  should  be  from  six  to  twelve.  Nearly  all  of 
our  correspondents  are  emphatic  regarding  waste 
and  the  importance  of  shortening  the  entire  period 
of  general  education.  Saving  of  time  can  be  made 
in  the  following  ways : 

"1.  The  principle  of  selection  is  first.  Choose 
the  most  important  subjects  and  the  most  important 
topics;  make  a  distinction  between  first-rate  facts 
and  principles  and  tenth- rate;  prune  thoroughly, 
stick  to  the  elements  of  a  subject ;  do  not  try  to  teach 
everything  that  is  good;  confine  the  period  of  ele- 
mentary education  to  mastering  the  tools  of  educa- 
tion. This  does  not  prevent  inspirational  work, 
which  is  a  demand  on  the  skill  of  the  teacher  rather 
than  on  time.  A  great  secret  of  education  is  to  ac- 
complish a  maximum  of  training  with  a  minimum 
of  material.    This  is  especially  true  of  formal  sub- 


194  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

jects;  it  is  true  also  of  inspirational  subjects  in  that 
after  a  general  survey  of  the  field,  emphasis  should 
be  placed  upon  a  few  selected  points.  Under  the 
conditions  above  enumerated,  the  formal  elementary 
period  can  end  in  six  years. 

"2.  Content  subjects  should  not  be  taught  with 
the  methods  suitable  to  the  formal  subjects;  for  in- 
stance, in  the  elementary  period,  literature,  history 
and  science  should  be  inspirational;  this  does  not 
mean  presentation  to  pupils  of  amusing  stuff.  No 
doctrine  has  been  more  harmful  than  that  one  sub- 
ject of  study  is  as  good  as  another  and  that  all 
subjects  should  be  taught  alike ;  arithmetic  is  a  tool 
and  a  discipline  in  absolute  accuracy ;  literature,  his- 
tory, and  elementary  science  in  this  period  are  for 
culture. 

"3.  Include  the  last  two  years  of  the  elementary 
school  in  the  period  of  secondary  education  and  be- 
gin the  study  of  foreign  languages,  elementary  alge- 
bra, constructive  geometry,  elementary  science,  and 
history  two  years  earlier.',  ' 

A£  the  end.  of  the  elementary  course,  at  twelve 
or  fourteen,  the  student  comes  to  the  parting  of  the 
ways.  Up  to  this  point  all  children  follow  the  same 
general  course.  Now,  individual  inclinations  and  so- 
cial forces  lead  the  youth  in  different  directions,  and 
it  is  the  plain  duty  of  the  schools  to  give  the  best  that 
they  are  capable  of  giving  to  those  who  are  com- 
pelled to  follow  one  course  as  well  as  to  those  who 
elect  to  follow  another.  The  fortunately  circum- 
stanced go  to  high  school  and  enter  upon  a  supple- 
mentary course  of  general  training  which  may  also 


PREVOCATIONAL   TRAINING       195 

distinctly  prepare  for  entrance  into  vocational 
schools  of  engineering,  law  or  medicine.  Ample  pro- 
vision is  made  for  all  who  desire,  and  are  able,  to 
follow  this  course  and  also  for  those  who  go  still 
further  and  take  a  college  course  as  further  general 
education  or  as  a  more  thorough  preparation  for  the 
study  of  a  learned  vocation. 

The  present  problem  is  to  give  the  same  efficient 
prevocational  education  to  the  great  mass  of  youth 
who  quit  school  or  who  remain  in  the  school,  but 
who  are  indifferent  to  it.  It  is  demonstrated  by  ex- 
perience that  the  majority  of  the  boys  and  girls  leave 
school  at  fourteen,  or  before  the  completion  of  the 
grammar  grades.  Part  of  them  go  to  work  in  fac- 
tories, stores  and  workshops  and  at  odd  jobs;  a  part 
assist  at  home,  and  a  part  become  mere  idlers. 

The  work  upon  which  the  majority  of  youth  en- 
ter at  fourteen  does  not  promise  anything  for  future 
advancement.  Mostly  such  work  leads  into  blind 
alleys..  The  skilled  trades  do  not  take  apprentices  or 
helpers  before  sixteen  and  employers  in  progressive 
occupations  do  not  want  workers  before  that  age. 
The  years_frpm  fourteen  to  sixteen  are  wasted  years 
in  industry  and,  under  present  conditions,  they  are 
wasted  years  in  school.  They  are  worse  than  wasted 
if  children  are  led  into  blind  alleys  in  industry,  or  if 
they  acquire  slovenly  habits  of  work  in  school 
through  dislike  of  the  school  courses. 

A  new  type  of  industrial  school  is  needed  to  fill 


196  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

the  gap  which  now  exists  in  our  educational  system. 
The  new  school  must  make  its  appeal  to  the  millions 
of  boys  and  girls  from  fourteen  to  sixteen  years  of 
age_who  do  not  take  advantage  of  the  academic 
high  school.  It  must  be  open  to  all  who  can  profit  by 
it  whether  they  have  completed  the  eighth  grade  or 
the  first  grade.  It  must  make  its  appeal  by  interest 
instead  of  by  compulsion  and  it  must  therefore  be 
closely  related  to  the  life  of  youth  or  their  vocational 
inclinations.  It  will  be  adapted  by  necessity  to  the 
dominant  interests  of  the  community.  Agriculture, 
trades,  industries  and  bus4ness--will  be  emphasized 
in  their  proper  place.  Home  economics  will  be  uni- 
versal for  girls,  but  adapted  to  the  particular  re- 
quirements of  each  community.  Above  all,  the  prob- 
lems which  confront  every  one  as  a  consumer  of 
goods  or  pleasures,  will  receive  universal  attention 
as  a  means  of  conservation  of  vital  and  material  re- 
sources. 

The  industrial  schools  should  not  seek  to  teach  a 
vocation  in  its  entirety.  Children  under  sixteen  are 
too  young  for  formal  vocational  training.  The  prime 
purpose  in  this  period  is  to  utilize  the  vocational  in- 
terests for  the  purpose  of  broader  education.  But 
much  vocational  knowledge  and  skill  should  result, 
and  principally  such  knowledge  and  skill  as  will  in- 
telligently guide  youth  away  from  unpromising,  un- 
economic employment,  into  permanent  vocations 
which  offer  a  satisfactory  future. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  PLACE  OF  THE  VOCATIONAL  SCHOOL 

The  place  of  the  vocational  school — Takes  place  of  apprentice- 
ship— Extent  of  vocational  schools — Professional  schools-— 
Vocational  schools  for  defectives  and  delinquents — Need  for 
vocational  schools  for  the  great  mass  of  workers — Require- 
ments— Open  to  all  who  can  profit  by  the  instruction — To  pre- 
pare all-round  workers — Must  be  practical — Supply  -deficien- 
cies of  apprenticeships — Needs  for  many  kinds  of  vocational 
schools — The  heart  of  the  vocational  education  system. 

Vocational  education  has  been  defined  as  that 
kind  of  education  the  controlling  purpose  of  which 
is  to  fit  for  .profitable  employment  An  all-time 
vocationaTschool  is  one  which  seeks  to  organize  the 
body  of  principles  and  facts  of  any  given  trade,  pro- 
fession or  calling  and  to  impart  them  to  the  learner, 
together  with  skill  in  performance  of  the  work  re- 
quired in  the  trade,  profession  or  calling. 

It  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  sharply  between  a 
school  for  general  education  and  a  school  for  voca- 
tional education  because  what  might  be  general 
education  to  one  person  might  be  vocational  prepa- 
ration to  another.  Thus  the  ordinary  college  course 
is  usually  counted  as  general  education,  while  to 
many  it  is  a  vocational  preparation  for  teaching, 
public  service,  social  service  work  and  many  un- 

19Z 


198  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

classified  callings.  Likewise,  a  high-school  educa- 
tion, while  general  to  nearly  all  of  the  students, 
is  vocational  to  a  small  minority.  Both  in  college 
and  high  school  the  same  training  may  be  to  one 
person  a  preparation  to  enter  a  professional  school, 
while  to  another  it  may  be  the  preparation  for  actual 
work. 

Broadly  speaking,  however,  a  vocational  school  is 
one  whose  distinct  purpose  is  vocational  preparation 
and  whose  courses  are  devoted,  almost  entirely,  to 
subjects  and  training  directly  connected  with  that 
preparation. 

The  most  highly  developed  forms  of  the  voca- 
tional school  are  the  medical  and  nurses'  schools, 
law  schools,  theological  seminaries,  normals,  dental 
schools,  schools  of  pharmacy,  veterinary  science, 
engineering  and  architecture,  and  schools  for  the 
training  of  machinists,  carpenters  and  electricians. 

The  evolution  of  these  schools  follows  a  similar 
course.  Training  for  each  of  these  vocations  was 
at  first  by  the  apprenticeship  system.  Typical  of  the 
development  is  that  of  the  medical  colleges.  Med- 
ical education  in  this  country  "began  and  for  many 
years  continued  to  exist  as  a  supplement  to  the 
apprenticeship  system  still  in  vogue  during  the  sev- 
enteenth and  eighteenth  centuries.  The  likely  youth 
of  that  period  destined  to  a  medical  career  was  at 
an  early  age  indentured  to  some  reputable  practi- 
tioner,   to    whom   his    services    were    successively 


THE   VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       199 

menial,  pharmaceutical  and  professional;  he  ran  his 
master's  errands,  washed  the  bottles,  mixed  the 
drugs,  spread  the  plasters  and  finally,  as  the  stipu- 
lated term  drew  toward  its  close,  actually  took  part 
in  the  daily  practise  of  his  preceptor — bleeding  his 
patients,  pulling  their  teeth  and  obeying  a  hurried 
summons  in  the  night.  The  quality  of  the  training 
varied  within  large  limits  with  the  capacity  and  con- 
scientiousness of  the  master/'1 

Likewise  in  law,  the  prevailing  method  of  instruc- 
tion up  to  recently  was  the  practical  training  of 
young  law  students  in  the  office  of  a  practising 
attorney,  where  the  students  did  the  menial  and 
simpler  tasks  of  the  office  in  return  for  the  instruc- 
tion and  guidance  of  the  attorney. 

Dentistry,  engineering,  pharmacy,  architecture, 
were  all  taught  in  the  same  way.  But  successively 
as  the  body  of  knowledge  available  for  each  of  these 
vocations  increased  in  quantity  and  complexity  and 
the  responsibilities  of  the  practitioners  became 
heavier,  something  further  was  needed  to  supple- 
ment the  apprenticeship  training. 

The  movement  for  the  building  up  of  vocational 
schools  was  accelerated  also  by  the  rising  standards 
of  all  vocations  touching  the  public  health,  comfort 
and  safety.  Licenses  to  practise,  based  upon  proved 
qualifications,  made  necessary  a  broader  knowledge, 


1  Medical  Education  in  the   United  States,  Bulletin  No.  4, 
p.  3.    Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching. 


200  LEARNING   JO   EARN 

and  that  knowledge  could  not  be  acquired  with  cer- 
tainty except  by  organized  courses  of  instruction. 
The  vocational  school  has  therefore  in  many  callings 
almost  entirely  replaced  the  older  system  of  training. 
In  1912-13  there  were  in  the  United  States  one 
hundred  and  seventy-nine  theological  seminaries, 
with  ten  thousand  nine  hundred  and  sixty-five  stu- 
dents; one  hundred  and  twenty- four  law  schools, 
with  twenty  thousand  eight  hundred  and  seventy- 
eight  students;  one  hundred  and  four  medical 
schools,  with  seventeen  thousand  and  twenty-one 
students;  forty-eight  dental  schools,  with  eight 
thousand  one  hundred  and  fifteen  students;  seventy- 
five  schools  of  pharmacy,  with  six  thousand  one 
hundred  and  sixty-five  students;  one  thousand  and 
ninety- four  tracing  schools  for  nurses,  with  thirty- 
four  thousand  liur  hundred  and  seventeen  students ; 
twenty-two  veterinary  colleges,  with  two  thousand 
three  hundred  and  twenty- four  students;  there  were 
ninety- four  thousand  four  hundred  and  fifty-five 
students  in  normal  schools,  while  fully  fifty  thou- 
sand more  were  preparing  for  teaching  in  the  regu- 
lar college  course  and  in  the  state  universities  alone 
over  fifteen  thousand  were  taking  engineering  and 
other  technological  courses.  In  most  of  these  voca- 
tions at  the  present  time  few,  if  any,  persons  enter 
except  through  the  preparation  of  the  vocational 
schools,  and  the  place  of  the  school  is  permanently 
fixed. 


THE   VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       201 

One  by  one  these  vocational  schools  have  been 
developed  and  the  movement  is  rapidly  extending  to 
provide  means  of  vocational  preparation  in  the  many 
fields  in  which  men  labor.  In  much  of  this  develop- 
ment the  incentive  of  public  protection  against  in- 
competence in  matters  closely  affecting  safety, 
health  and  convenience  has  been  uppermost.  That 
same  incentive  will  extend  vocational  education  still 
more  widely,  for  it  is  a  matter  of  public  protection 
to  see  that  the  electrician  is  competent  to  wire  a 
house,  or  the  plumber  to  install  sanitary  fixtures,  or 
the  engineer  to  safeguard  the  lives  and  property  in 
his  keeping.  Hundreds  of  instances  might  be  cited 
to  show  the  dependence  of  the  public  upon  the  qual- 
ity of  work  of  men  in  all  kinds  of  skilled  occupa- 
tion. The  incompetent  bricklayer  or  carpenter  may 
leave  defects  which  will  prove  dangerous ;  the  grocer 
who  does  not  know  his  business  may  endanger  lives 
by  unsanitary  products,  and  the  janitor  holds  a 
direct  relation  to  the  safety  and  comfort  of  his 
employer  or  the  latter's  tenants. 

Even  where  the  relation  to  health  and  safety  is 
not  direct  there  is  a  demand  for  competence  to  con- 
serve resources  by  the  prevention  of  waste  and  the 
full  utilization  of  all  material  for  their  best  pur- 
poses. 

The  development  of  vocational  instruction  has 
been  uniformly  the  same.    At  first,  training  was  by  , 
means  of  apprenticeship,  then  the  school  came  to   ^ 


202  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

supplement  apprenticeship,  and  finally  it  superseded 
the  apprenticeship  system  entirely.  The  present 
tendency  is  to  combine  the  two  by  supplementing  the 
vocational  school  with  a  well-regulated  apprentice- 
ship after  the  completion  of  the  formal  or  founda- 
tion courses. 

Another  development  of  vocational  schools  should 
be  noted.  At  the  farthest  extreme  from  profes- 
sional schools,  vocational  preparation  has  been  de- 
veloped for  defectives,  delinquents  and  dependents. 
Simple  trades  and  occupations  are  taught  to  the 
blind,  deaf  and  dumb,  the  feeble-minded  and  to  the 
delinquent  boys  and  girls  in  industrial  schools  and  to 
men  and  women  in  reformatories.  Excellent  results 
have  been  obtained  from  this  training  and  the  object 
lesson  is  impressive.  Here  is  proof  that  even  in  the 
simplest  work  instruction  may  be  so  organized  as  to 
train  a  mentally  weak  and  abnormal  person  to  do 
certain  definite  things  with  profit  to  himself  and  the 
state  and  the  joy  of  accomplishment. 

Between  the  extremes  of  professional  preparation 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  vocational  training  of  de- 
fectives and  delinquents  on  the  other,  stands  the  need 
of  training  the  great  body  of  men  and  women  who 
toil  for  a  living.  It  is  of  these  that  the  federal 
commission  on  vocational  education  said  not  one  in 
a  hundred  is  properly  trained  for  the  work  he  is 
doing. 

Beginnings  have  been  made  and  at  least  enough 


THE   VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       203 

has  been  done  to  enable  us  to  determine  the  ramifica- 
tions of  the  problem. 

In  1913  there  were  in  the  United  States  more  than 
three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  students  in  com- 
mercial courses  in  public  and  private  schools.  This 
represented  a  fair  proportion  of  those  who  were 
preparing  for  employment  in  stenography,  book- 
keeping and  office  work.  The  larger  part  of  these 
students  were  being  prepared  in  private  commercial 
schools  operated  for  profit,  with  the  educational 
features  in  the  backgpmnd.  The  barest  elements 
are  offered  and  no  pretense  of  a  real  broad  voca- 
tional training  in  commercial  work  is  made.  Such 
training  amounts  to  a  preparation  to  begin  simple 
work,  but  is  not  a  means,  however,  of  training  for 
any  large  success  in  such  vocations. 

But  on  the  side  of  productive  work  in  the  indus- 
trial world  an  insignificant  percentage  of  the  new 
recruits  are  prepared,  even  in  the  slightest  degree, 
for  the  work  they  are  undertaking.  Trade  schools 
are  a  rarity.  While  they  are  common  enough  to 
prove  their  efficacy,  they  do  not  yet  train  any  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  skilled  workers  in  any  city, 
and  in  many  of  the  states  they  are  wholly  unknown. 
In  a  few  of  the  highly  skilled  trades  a  number  of 
trade  schools  can  be  found.  Carpentry  and  the 
machine  trades  are  taught  in  a  large  number  of 
places  scattered  over  the  country.  Here  and  there 
isolated  schools  are  giving  courses  in  specific  call- 


204  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

ings.  Experience  is  available  for  teaching  fully  a 
hundred  well-organized  vocations,  yet  probably  in 
the  whole  country  not  more  than  ten  thousand  boys 
and  girls  are  being  trained,  while  the  annual  draft 
of  youth  for  the  industries  exceeds  a  million  and  a 
half. 

This  cursory  review  of  the  extent  of  schools  de- 
signed to  fit  persons  for  profitable  employment  will 
serve  to  determine  more  definitely  the  purpose  of 
such  schools.  One  thing  is  evident,  that  vocational 
schools  may  successfully  train  men  and  women  for 
simple  callings,  skilled  trades  or  the  most  exacting 
professions. 

The  period  of  experiment  has  passed  in  training 
for  some  vocations  and  is  passing  in  others.  The 
universal  success  of  such  schools  impels  the  confi- 
dent expectation  that  they  will  be  successful  in  any 
vocation  which  is  dependent  upon  a  body  of  knowl- 
edge and  skill  capable  of  organization  and  applica- 
tion. 

Let  us  now  examine  more  closely  the  basicjdeas 
of  schools  organized  for  the  purpose  of  vocational 
preparation. 

1.  The  first  consideration  is  that  the  students 
shall  be  able  to  profit  by  the  instruction  offered. 
This  means  that  they  shall  be  old  enough  to  engage 
profitably  in  the  work  of  the  vocation  for  which 
they  are  trained  and  that  they  shall  have  definitely 
decided  to  follow  that  vocation.    It  means  also  that 


THE    VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       205 

they  ought  to  be  reasonably  adapted  to  the  work 
they  will  be  required  to  do.  It  is  a  waste  of  time  to 
try  to  train  a  clumsy  slow-thinking  boy  to  be  a 
stenographer  or  telegrapher,  or  a  man  who  can^not 
master  mathematics  to  be  an  electrical  engineer. 

The  earliest  age  at  which  the  simplest  vocational 
schools  should  be  open  is  about  sixteen,  and  entrance 
into  vocational  schools  for  the  more  complex  call- 
ings should  be  based  upon  the  amount  of  prelim- 
inary training  needed  for  the  successful  study  of  the 
vocation.  This  will  vary  greatly,  rising  in  such  pro- 
fessions as  medicine  to  a  college  preparation. 

There  are  two  considerations  which  argue  for  the 
sixteen-year  age  requirement.  The  period  up  to 
that  age  is  the  time  for  general  education.  Children 
need  to  test  themselves  out.  No  child  could  intelli- 
gently choose  to  prepare  for  a  vocation  before  that 
age  and  any  attempt  to  choose  for  him  is  wrong. 
Secondly,  there  are  few  callings  for  which  voca- 
tional schools  should  be  organized  to  prepare  that 
can  profitably  use  trained  workers  at  a  younger  age 
than  seventeen  or  eighteen.  Most  of  the  skilled 
trades  fix  the  entrance  age  upon  apprenticeship  at 
sixteen,  and  that  is  the  earliest  accepted  age  at 
which  preparation  for  such  trades  in  schools  should 
begin. 

With  such  powerful  reasons  in  favor  of  this  mini- 
mum, it  is  clear,  as  heretofore  pointed  out,  that  the 
elementary  schools  should  fill  the  period  up  to  six- 


206  LEARNING   TO    EARN 


teen.  To  do  that  will  require  the  establishment  of 
a  new  type  of  school  for  the  "wasted  years"  be- 
tween fourteen  and  sixteen  for  those  who  do  not 
profit  by  the  bookish  high  school.  Probably  the 
solution  of  this  problem  will  be  found  in  the  general 
industrial  preparatory  courses  which,  while  not 
training  directly  for  a  vocation,  will  lay  the  founda- 
tion for  the  study  of  different  vocations  and  will 
give  sound  guidance  in  the  choice  of  a  vocation  for 
which  to  prepare. 

2.  Vocational  schools  are  designed  to  prepare 
all-round  workers  and  not  specialized  automatons. 
It  is  because  industry  has  failed  to  do  this  that  the 
necessity  for  vocational  schools  arises.  Under  the 
apprentice  system  in  profession  and  trade  the  ap- 
prentice was  trained  narrowly  in  the  main  to  the 
specialty  which  the  master  knew.  Broad  training  in 
the  whole  profession  or  trade  was  impossible  except 
in  those  rare  cases  where  the  master  knew  his  trade 
or  profession  thoroughly  and  had  the  teaching 
power  to  impart  it  to  his  pupil.  Under  modern 
machine  production  methods  even  the  training 
which  apprenticeship  afforded  can  not  be  had. 
Workers  are  put  at  a  single  process  and  after  they 
become  proficient  in  it  they  are  kept  at  it.  "Manu- 
facturers want  men,"  said  a  prominent  manufac- 
turer at  the  Grand  Rapids  meeting  of  the  National 
Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Industrial  Education, 


THE   VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       207 

"who  are  content  to  stay  at  one  machine  process 
after  they  have  become  proficient  in  it." 

The  vocational  school  challenges  that  position  and 
says  that  no  man  should  be  forced,  for  lack  of  the 
opportunity  for  training,  to  become  a  mere  automa- 
ton. The  school  would  therefore  offer  the  chance 
to  become  skilful  in  as  many  operations  as  the 
ability  of  the  worker  will  permit,  and  would  give  the 
opportunity  for  the  full  mastery  to  those  who  are 
capable  to  accomplish  it.  By  so  doing  the  school 
stands  for  the  man  by  opening  a  way  out  of  a  blind 
alley,  and  it  stands  for  industry  by  promoting 
greater  industrial  intelligence  and  adaptability.  The 
vocational  school  also  takes  account  of  the  supple- 
mentary knowledge  needed  to  give  a  broad  view  of 
the  vocation  as  a  whole  and  its  relation  to  society 
and  also  of  the  growth  of  science,  art  and  invention 
which  are  constantly  reshaping  old  processes  of  in- 
dustry and  adding  new  processes.  Education  in  its 
true  sense,  as  well  as  training  for  skill,  is  the  end 
and  aim  of  vocational  schools  in  professions,  trades 
and  occupations. 

3.  Vocational  schools  are  designed  to  train  men 
and  women  to  do  definite  things.  They  must  there- 
fore be  practical.  By  their  results  men  expect  to 
earn  their  daily  bread.  The  knowledge  and  skill 
which  they  give  are  put  at  once  to  the  acid  test  of 
actual  work.    The  young  doctor,  lawyer  or  pharma- 


208  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

cist  from  the  professional  schools  must  handle  actual 
cases,  and  life  and  property  are  dependent  upon 
them.  The  carpenter,  plumber,  printer  and  machin- 
ist from  the  trade  school  go  to  work  for  wages,  and 
their  employment  is  dependent  upon  their  ability  to 
do  the  work  of  their  trade  satisfactorily.  The 
farmer  and  housekeeper  put  their  knowledge  and 
skill  to  a  concrete  test  and  mistakes  are  costly. 

To  train  workers  to  actual  work  the  vocational 
school  should  have  the  equipment  to  enable  its  stu- 
dents to  perform  the  work  which  they  must  do  in 
their  profession,  trade  or  calling,  and  to  perform  it 
under  as  nearly  trade  conditions  as  possible.  This 
requirement  is  the  first  essential  of  a  vocational 
school. 

To  a  degree  that  it  is  not  met,  the  school  produces 
theorists  instead  of  skilled  workers.  Many  have 
professed  to  see  in  this  requirement  the  fatal  weak- 
ness of  vocational  schools  because  of  the  expense  of 
equipment,  the  difficulty  of  putting  the  work  en  a 
commercial  basis  and  the  problem  of  disposal  of  the 
product.  Doubtless  in  many  vocations  these  diffi- 
culties are  very  great,  in  some  perhaps  insurmount- 
able, except  by  cooperation  with  shops,  offices  and 
industries,  but  these  difficulties  must  be  studied  and 
overcome  in  the  best  manner  possible.  Professional 
and  technical  schools  are  being  equipped  with  ade- 
quate laboratories  and  shops,  trade  schools  are 
proving  that  such  facilities  may  be  provided  in  a 


THE    VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       209 

large  number  of  trades,  and  cooperation  between 
shop  and  school  is  opening  a  practicable  and  efficient 
means  of  doing  actual  work.  All  experience  would 
suggest  that  these  problems  may  be  solved  by  care- 
fully analyzing  the  processes  of  industry  and  by 
working  out  an  harmonious  relation  of  the  work  of 
the  school  and  the  shop. 

4.  The  vocational  school  is  intended  to  supply  the 
deficiencies  of  the  apprenticeship  system.  The 
breakdown  of  the  latter  creates  the  necessity  for  such 
a  school.  Because  the  apprentice  in  most  trades,  pro- 
fessions and  callings  does  not  receive  the  broad 
education  which  he  needs  for  industrial  efficiency 
and  civic  power,  the  vocational  school  is  organized. 
It  is  not  a  rival  institution.  It  does  those  things 
which  apprenticeship  is  failing  to  do.  Its  purpose 
is  to  supply  to  workers  that  education  which  an 
ideal  system  of  apprenticeship  formerly  gave,  i.  e., 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  best  practise,  skill  in 
performance  of  the  work  required,  scientific  insight 
into  its  processes,  an  understanding  of  its  relation  to 
society  as  a  whole,  and  a  capacity  to  grow  with  the 
growth  of  science,  art  and  invention  in  the  calling. 
The  vocational  school  must  therefore  be  thorough 
in  its  work.  It  must  be  so  if  it  is  to  have  an  endur- 
ing effect  in  the  advancement  of  science,  skill  and 
intelligence  in  any  vocation.  It  must  be  thorough 
also  if  its  graduates  are  to  be  respected  among  their 
craftsmen.     Skilled  workers  in  any  vocation  look 


210  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

with  just  suspicions  upon  the  "half -baked' '  worker, 
whether  he  is  a  quack  in  medicine,  a  pettifogger  in 
law  or  a  half -trained  strikebreaker  in  a  trade. 

Protesting  upon  this  point,  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labor  declared  against  "those  schools  oper- 
ated for  profit  which  advertise  short  cuts  to  the 
trades.  They  are  turning  out  not  even  machine 
specialists,  but  are  flooding  the  labor  market  with 
half -trained  mechanics  for  the  purpose  of  exploita- 
tion. There  is  a  growing  feeling  which  is  gaining 
rapidly  in  strength  that  the  human  element  must  be 
recognized,  and  can  not  be  so  disregarded  as  to 
make  the  future  workmen  either  inefficient  or  mere 
automatic  machines.  .  .  .  We  do  insist  that 
emphasis  must  be  placed  upon  education  rather  than 
upon  product.  The  youth  must  not  be  exploited  in 
the  name  of  education.  There  must  be  the  minimum 
of  product  and  a  maximum  of  education.  In  short, 
during  the  period  of  education  it  ought  to  be  'con- 
struction for  instruction  rather  than  instruction  for 
construction.'  "2 

5.  Vocational  schools  should  be  established  in  as 
many  vocations  as  possible  in  order  to  offset  the 
present  "vicious  distribution  of  population"  in  the 
work  of  the  world,  resulting  from  giving  special 
opportunities  for  training  in  a  few  vocations.  Hav- 
ing accepted  our  duty  to  provide  the  means  of  train- 


Report  on  Industrial  Education,  p.  26. 


THE   VOCATIONAL    SCHOOL       211 

ing  for  profitable  employment  in  some  vocations,  we 
must  accept  the  full  burden  of  vocational  training 
in  as  many  of  the  fields  of  labor  as  conditions  war- 
rant. There  is  no  reason  for  a  school  of  electrical 
engineering  which  does  not  call  for  a  school  for 
electricians;  there  is  no  reason  to  provide  a  college 
of  mechanical  engineering  and  not  a  school  for 
machinists;  there  is  as  much  need  for  a  school  for 
sanitarians  as  for  physicians.  In  fact,  there  is  an 
even  greater  obligation  upon  the  public  to  provide  a 
universal  system  of  vocational  schools  because  pri- 
vate as  well  as  public  enterprise  has,  by  supplying 
facilities  in  certain  fields  and  not  in  others,  pro- 
moted a  "vicious  distribution"  of  workers.  The 
correction  of  this  social  aberration  will  not  be  made 
except  by  public  action  which  shall  seek  to  raise  the 
humbler  occupations  in  dignity  beside  their  prouder 
sisters,  by  discovering  all  there  is  in  each  vocation  of 
large  human  significance  and  by  seeking  to  impart 
the  requisite  knowledge  and  skill  in  a  broad  educa- 
tional program.  / 
6.  The  vocational  school  is  the  core  of  the  voca-. 
tional  education  system.  It  will  be  in  each  vocation? 
the  nucleus  from  which  will  radiate  educational 
activities  designed  to  reach  and  benefit  all  the  work- 
ers in  the  vocation  through  part-time  courses,  eve- 
ning courses,  extension  work  and  effective  reading. 
In  itself  it  will  not  solve  the  vocational  problem  in 
many  vocations  for  the  reason  that  at  best  it  will 


212  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

directly  educate  only  a  small  portion  of  the  workers. 
But  it  will  develop  a  body  of  knowledge  of  the  voca- 
tion, a  scientific  approach  to  its  problems  and  a 
method  of  effective  teaching.  It  will  supply  the  raw 
material  for  each  vocation  just  as  the  schools  of  ag- 
riculture have  supplied  the  science,  art  and  teaching 
knowledge  for  the  wide  extension  of  agricultural 
data  through  winter  schools,  extension  teaching, 
demonstration  farms  and  informational  bulletins, 
and  it  will  be  the  means  of  preparing  teachers  who, 
where  their  knowledge  shall  have  been  reinforced  by 
practical  experience  in  actual  work,  will  be  the  most 
powerful  factors  in  the  right  guidance  of  vocational 
education. 


CHAPTER  XI 

PART-TIME  EDUCATION 

Needs  of  youth  who  quit  school — Schools  must  supply  further 
education  if  workers  are  to  progress — School  has  heretofore 
stopped  at  factory  door — Continuation  courses  to  help  misfits 
— Trade  extension  courses  to  increase  efficiency — Supplemen- 
tary training  requires  correlation  of  study  with  the  occupa- 
tion— Analysis  of  occupations  needed — Part-time  education 
useful  to  adults — Evening  schools — Courses  need  to  be  prac- 
tical and  definite. 

One  of  the  unsolved  educational  problems  is  to 
reach  and  promote  the  welfare  of  the  great  numbers 

I  of  persons  over  fourteen  years  of  age  who  leave  the 
schools  and  enter  upon  employment  before  being 
properly  educated  for  vocational  work  or  civic  effi- 
ciency. Elsewhere  in  this  volume  the  facts  are  given 
concerning  the  defection  of  youth  from  school  at  or 
about  fourteen  years  of  age.  It  is  unnecessary  here 
to  enlarge  upon  the  reasons  already  given  why  chil- 
dren leave  school.  The  bare  fact  remains  that  they 
do  leave  and  that  they  are  all  too  poorly  qualified  to 
take  up  the  industrial  burdens  which  they  are  assum- 
ing. 

At  present  it  is  probably  impossible  to  bring  any 
large  portion  of  these  children  back  into  the  school, 
no  matter  how  attractive  the  courses  may  be  made. 

j  It  is  hard  for  such  children  to  see  the  advantage  of 

213 


214  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

foregoing  the  wage  which  they  earn — however 
small — in  order  to  seek  personal  efficiency  through 
a  return  to  the  all-day  school.  Most  young  people 
must  have  experience  and  work  to  convince  them  of 
the  need  and  value  of  vocational  training.  They 
must  work  long  enough  and  under  such  conditions 
as  to  realize  what  their  deficiency  in  education 
means.  They  are  likely  to  see  by  experience  and 
work  that  broader  knowledge  gives  greater  adapta- 
bility and  insures  steadier  employment  and  more 
certain  promotion.  The  "way  out"  becomes  more 
definite  than  when  viewed  as  an  abstract  problem 
before  leaving  the  schools  and  being  sobered  by 
actual  work. 

Even  when  a  system  of  education  shall  have  been 
established  more  suited  to  the  needs  of  all  children, 
there  will  still  be  large  numbers  who  will  leave 
school  from  economic  necessity  or  short-sightedness 
and  enter  into  unskilled  work  having  no  outlook. 

The  vitalizing  of  elementary  courses  for  children 
under  fourteen,  the  establishment  of  vocational  pre- 
paratory schools  for  children  between  fourteen  and 
sixteen,  and  the  organization  of  vocational  schools 
for  youth  above  sixteen  will  hold  many  children  in 
school  for  a  longer  period  and  give  to  many  a  prepa- 
ration for  a  life-work,  but  the  real  problem  is  to 
reach  the  boy  or  girl  who,  for  any  reason,  has  gone 
to  work. 

The  place  of  the  school  is  clear  in  this  matter. 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  215 

Industry  as  now  organized  does  not  and  will  not 
look  after  any  considerable  part  of  the  youth  who 
enter  upon  work  every  year  in  great  throngs.  If 
any  further  education  is  supplied  to  them,  the 
schools  must  supply  it.  It  must  not  be  assumed, 
however,  that  no  important  obligation  rests  on  the 
employer  in  behalf  of  the  further  education  of  his 
young  employees.  The  benefits  are  partly  his  and  the 
obligation  should  be  in  proportion  to  the  benefits. 

Industries  are  calling  for  more  general  industrial 
intelligence  which  will  give  greater  adaptability, 
interest  and  precision  in  work  and  which  will  make 
the  task  of  foremen  and  superintendents  less  diffi- 
cult than  it  is  with  large  numbers  of  workers  who 
are  mere  automatons — a  part  of  the  machine  on 
which  they  work.  Progressive  employers  realize 
that  they  can  not  go  on  indefinitely  drawing  their 
skilled  men,  foremen  and  superintendents  from  out- 
side the  shop,  from  the  schools,  or  from  the  ranks 
of  the  skilled  workers  of  Europe;  they  know  that 
the  most  substantial  progress  is  to  be  made  by  a 
forward  movement  all  along  the  line  in  their  shops 
— by  opening  up  the  road  along  which  each  and 
every  employee  may  travel  toward  the  goal  of 
greater  skill  and  power.  Thus-  what  the  state  desires 
for  the  welfare  of  the  individual  and  society,  the 
industries  need  as  a  material  asset. 

To  state  the  problem  in  this  way  is  to  suggest  the 
obligations  of  each.    When  all  purposes  conspire  to 


216  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

one  end,  there  should  be  little  difficulty  in  fixing  the 
responsibility  of  each.  The  scheme  of  part-time 
education  recognizes  the  obligation  of  the  state  and 
of  industry  by  providing  for  the  necessary  instruc- 
tion and  guidance  through  the  agency  of  the  school 
and  by  requiring  that  industry  shall  so  adjust  itself 
to  the  scheme  that  young  workers  shall  be  allowed 
the  time  from  their  daily  employment  to  get  the 
education  necessary  to  themselves  as  workers  and 
citizens. 

Let  us  see  the  extent  of  the  problem  of  educating 
young  workers.  In  1910  there  were  nearly  five 
million  boys  and  two  and  one-half  million  girls  from 
ten  to  twenty  years  of  age  at  work  in  factories, 
stores  and  workshops.  A  very  large  majority 
of  these  had  less  than  a  grammar-school  educa- 
tion. An  insignificant  percentage  are  employed  in 
such  a  way  as  to  grow  in  vocational  power.  Con- 
finement to  single  automatic  processes  has  closed 
the  door  to  a  general  knowledge  of  the  whole  proc- 
ess or  business.  Whatever  of  initiative  they  might 
naturally  have  possessed  is  being  crushed  out  by 
monotonous  toil. 

The  first  duty  of  the  state  is  to  conserve  its  youth. 
Neglect  of  youth  results  in  stunted  manhood  and 
womanhood,  stunted  offspring  and  deterioration  of 
the  race.  The  state  must  see  to  it  that  childhood's 
bill  of  rights  is  observed,  and  among  these  rights  is 
the  child's  right  to  special  protection  during  the  time 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  217 

he  is  expanding  into  his  full  powers.  Every  encour- 
agement possible  should  be  given  to  enable  him  to 
reach  the  highest  degree  of  personal  efficiency. 

Education  in  its  broadest  sense  is  the  duty  which 
'the  state  primarily  owes  to  its  youth — education  for 
physical  welfare,  for  vocational  power,  and  for  civic 
and  moral  intelligence.  The  schools  constitute  the 
state's  only  agency  for  this  purpose. 

If,  then,  the  cold  hard  facts  show  that  our  youth 
are  leaving  school  at  an  early  age,  without  even  the 
education  deemed  essential  as  a  minimum  for  earn- 
ing a  living  or  for  effective  citizenship,  and  are 
entering  upon  occupations  which  lead  into  blind 
alleys,  it  becomes  the  plain  duty  of  the  state  so  to 
organize  its  courses  of  instruction  as  to  encourage 
a  longer  attendance  at  school  and  to  follow  into  the 
industries  those  who  go  to  work,  to  protect  them 
from  the  crushing  power  of  modern  industrialism 
and  to  guide  them  to  industrial  liberty  through  sup- 
plementary education  and  vocational  training. 

Instead  of  abandoning  the  child  to  his  own 
caprices,  the  selfishness  of  parents  and  the  greed  of 
industry,  the  state  should  recognize  its  duty  to  care 
for  the  education  and  proper  development  of  all 
youth  who  engage  in  industry  as  well  as  it  now  does 
for  those  who  remain  in  school.1 


1 A  program  of  part-time  education  in  industry  has  been 
laid  down  by  Arthur  D.  Dean  in  the  following  sections : 

1.  That  the  education  of  young  people  is  of  public  concern 
and  that  it  consists  of  more  than  the  training  received  in  the 


218  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

Heretofore  the  school  has  stopped  at  the  factory 
and  office  door  and  abandoned  the  young  who  enter. 
In  some  cities  and  towns  evening  schools  have  been 
provided  where  tired  teachers  have  taught  tired  stu- 
dents, in  the  vain  delusion  that  such  schools  would 
supply  the  deficiencies  of  the  young  who  work  dur- 
ing the  day.  Such  schools  have  offered  opportunity 
of  a  meager  sort,  but  only  to  the  exceptionally 
strong.  As  a  means  of  solving  the  problem  of  edu- 
cating the  boy  and  girl  at  work,  the  evening  school 
has  been  an  utter  failure.    It  is  a  cure  worse  than 


all-day  school  and  consequently  the  school  must  assume  a 
guardianship  of  its  youth  beyond  the  period  of  day  schooling. 

2.  That  the  purpose  of  employment  of  children  up  to 
eighteen  years  of  age  is  for  the  benefit  of  the  child,  forms  a 
part  of  his  educative  process,  and  involves  a  consideration  of 
the  most  important  question  of  how  far  employment  in  occu- 
patipns  suitable  to  childhood  can  be  made  educative. 

3.  That  no  child  is  to  go  to  work  until  he  has  reached  a 
certain  maturity,  the  degree  of  which  is  not  to  be  fixed  en- 
tirely by  age  limitations. 

4.  That  no  child  is  to  go  to  work  until  he  is  physically  fit 
to  enter  upon  an  occupational  life. 

5.  That  children  are  to  work  only  in  those  occupations 
which  have  been  approved  after  investigation  by  the  state  de- 
partment of  labor,  a  list  of  such  occupations  to  be  on  file  in 
the  office  of  the  local  superintendent  of  schools. 

6.  That  children  are  to  work  only  in  those  local  places  of 
productive  and  distributive  labor  the  physical  and  moral  con- 
ditions of  which  have  been  favorably  reported  upon  by  the 
state  labor  department  and  the  names  of  which  are  on  file  in 
the  office  of  the  local  superintendent  of  schools. 

7.  That  no  child  is  to  go  to  work  until  he  has  an  employ- 
ment certificate  entitling  him  to  work  at  a  specific  occupation 
for  a  specific  employer.  Every  month  the  certificate  is  to  be 
renewed  or  indorsed  at  the  office  of  the  superintendent  of 
schools  and  due  note  to  be  taken  relative  to  the  change  of 
process  or  occupation  to  which  the  child  has  been  assigned. 

8.  That  no  child  of  normal  health  is  to  remain  idle,  for 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  219 

the  disease,  when,  on  top  of  the  wearisome  toil  of  a 
day  in  a  factory,  the  tired  boy  or  girl  comes  to  the 
evening  school  for  further  education. 

The  part-time  school  is  needed  for  these  young 
workers,  whereby  they  may  devote  a  part  of  their 
working  day  to  instruction  which  will  supplement 
their  daily  experience  and  give  them  the  broader 
education  upon  which  their  future  growth  and  ad- 
vancement depend.  This  part-time  education  may 
be  given  in  classes  for  a  few  hours  each  week,  or  by 
alternate  days  or  weeks  in  the  shop  and  school,  or, 


immediately  after  the  child  has  ceased  to  be  employed  the 
employer  is  to  notify  the  local  school  authorities  and  the 
child  is  to  return  to  his  proper  grade  inthe  regular  schools  or 
in  special  classes  organized  for  such  children. 

9.  That  when  a  child  goes  to  work  he  is  to  work  the  first 
year  at  profitable  employment  for  not  more  than  one-half  of 
the  time  formerly  provided  for  in  the  child-labor  law;  that 
the  second  year  the  child  is  to  be  employed  not  more  than 
two-thirds  of  the  time  formerly  provided  for  such  employ- 
ment; that  in  the  third  year  the  child  is  to  be  employed  not 
more  than  three-fourths  of  the  time  formerly  provided  and 
that  not  until  the  child  is  eighteen  is  he  to  work  in  profitable 
employment  for  a  full  working  day. 

10.  That  a  child  is  to  spend  in  school  the  difference  between 
the  time  when  he  would  legally  be  at  work  if  section  9  did 
not  prevail  and  the  time  when  he  is  at  work  after  section  10 
prevails. 

11.  That  the  school  instruction  for  such  young  people  is  to 
have  any  one  or  a  combination  of  any  of  the  plans  herein  set 
forth.  To  wit:  (a)  that  the  school  work  is  to  continue  along 
lines  of  general  education;  or,  (b)  that  it  is  to  give  prevoca- 
tional  training  which  will  assist  the  young  worker  in  deter- 
mining his  vocational  qualifications  for  a  particular  occupa- 
tion;  or,  (c)  that  it  is  to  give  trade  or  occupational  extension 
work  in  order  that  he  may  be  more  proficient  in  the  occupa- 
tion at  which  he  is  now  engaged. 

I  Proceedings,  Department  of  Attendance,  N.  E.  A. 

Cincinnati,  Ohio,  February,  1915,  p.  47. 


220  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

in  the  case  of  seasonal  occupations,  a  few  weeks 
each  year  in  the  dull  season. 

Such  classes  may  be  organized  with  any  time  ar- 
rangement which  will  suit  the  convenience  of  the 
employer  and  employees  best,  the  essential  things 
being  that  such  education  shall  be  given  during  the 
daily  employment  and  that  the  instruction  shall  be 
under  public  control  and  shall  aim  to  accomplish  two 
ends — the  promotion  of  vocational  efficiency  and  the 
development  of  civic  intelligence. 

Two  types  of  training  should  be  provided  for 
youth  in  part-time  classes.  The  first  should  aim  to 
further  the  general  education  of  youth  who  are  in 
automatic  employments  or  in  blind-alley  jobs,  in 
order  to  enlarge  their  general  knowledge  and  guide 
them  into  vocations  suitable  for  permanent  employ- 
ment. This  is  the  function  of  the  "continuation 
school."  The  second  should  aim  to  increase  the 
vocational  knowledge,  in  the  line  in  which  they  are 
employed,  of  youth  who  have  chosen  a  suitable  voca- 
tion for  a  life-work.  This  is  the  function  of  "trade 
ision  courses." 

le  apprenticeship  system  formerly  supplied  the 
need  of  the  young  worker.  In  many  cases  the  law 
required  a  certain  amount  of  instruction  to  be  given 
and  the  very  nature  of  the  industry  gave  opportunity 
for  a  broad  knowledge  of  it.  The  apprentice  could 
learn  the  whole  trade  from  single  individuals.  To-! 
day,  if  he  learns  the  whole  trade,  he  must  get  it 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  221 

from  many  persons.  The  minute  division  of  labor 
in  most  industries  has  made  it  more  profitable  to 
keep  workers  at  single  processes  which  can  be 
learned  in  a  few  days.  The  opportunity  is  seldom 
offered  within  a  factory  for  a  broad  knowledge  of 
the  whole  trade  or  even  of  very  many  processes  of 
the  trade.  Young  men  become  discouraged  and 
drift  from  place  to  place,  hoping  thereby  to  "steal  a 
trade''  by  learning  several  processes  from  several 
shops,  or  they  become  discouraged  and  quit  to  take 
up  anything  that  offers. 

Under  the  apprenticeship  system  the  youth 
worked  with  the  master,  often  living  as  a  member 
of  the  family.  The  master  taught  the  apprentice  all 
he  knew  of  the  art  and  mystery  of  the  trade.  The 
master  was  in  a  position  to  supplement  the  daily 
tasks  of  the  boy  with  ready-at-hand  principles  and 
information.  If  the  master  knew  the  science  and 
art  of  his  craft,  this  was  the  ideal  system  of  part- 
time  education. 

The  same  thing  applied  in  the  training  of  young 
doctors,  lawyers,  pharmacists,  dentists  and  engi- 
neers. The  young  man  studied  beside  the  old  prac- 
titioner. He  did  part  of  the  work  of  his  master  and 
received  constant  advice  and  information  of  princi- 
ples and  practise.  He  had  a  ready  source  of  in- 
formation at  hand.  Again,  if  the  master  knew  his 
profession,  the  youth  received  the  ideal  part-time 
education.    Even  to-day  the  idea  is  kept  alive  in  the 


222  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

medical  profession  by  the  usual  practise  of  requir- 
ing a  year  in  a  hospital  for  medical  students,  and  in 
the  law  by  the  association  of  young  law  students  in 
the  office  of  practising  attorneys. 

In  earlier  times  education  was  crudely  of  a  part- 
time  character ;  that  is,  the  boy  on  the  farm  and  the 
girl  in  the  home  performed  regular  tasks  before  and 
after  school  and  during  vacations,  and  the  elder 
children  attended  the  schools  in  the  winter  or  other 
season  when  they  were  free.  This  condition  pre- 
vails largely  in  the  rural  communities  to-day.  It  has 
often  been  extolled  as  the  virtue  of  the  "little  red 
schoolhouse"  that  boys  and  girls  who  knew  how  to 
work  and  were  not  afraid  of  work  were  able  to 
profit  more  intensively  by  the  instruction  offered  in 
the  school. 

Doubtless  the  advantages  came  from  the  spirit  of 
work  which  prevailed,  although  some  may  have 
accrued  from  the  fact  that  school  work  did  not 
cover  a  confusing  range  of  studies.  One  thing  is 
certain,  namely,  that  the  advantages  were  not  se- 
cured by  any  coordination  of  the  school  work  with 
daily  life.  The  work  of  the  farm  or  home  was  sel- 
dom, if  ever,  brought  into  the  school  and  the  schools 
taught  subject-matter  entirely  foreign  to  the  farm 
and  home. 

Part-time  education  as  we  know  it  to-day  and  by 
which  we  mean  that  the  school  studies  shall  supple- 
ment practical  work,  was  almost  unknown.     Even 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  223 

to-day  the  barest  beginnings  have  been  attempted 
here  and  there  to  make  the  schools  relate,  even  in  the 
remotest  way,  to  work  which  the  young  people  are 
performing  in  the  home  and  on  the  farm.  When- 
ever it  has  been  attempted  it  has  not  been  effectively 
coordinated  so  that  each  project  at  home  shall  re- 
ceive its  proper  amount  of  supplementary  education 
and  so  that  each  parcel  of  education  may  be  carried 
to  a  good  end.  A  new  spirit  and  purpose  have, 
however,  taken  hold  of  our  rural  education.  We 
are  learning  the  secret  of  successful  rural  education. 
That  secret  is  found  in  the  application  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  part-time  education. 

Probably  in  no  field  of  work  is  there  such  a  vast 
range  of  supplementary,  scientific  and  practical 
knowledge  as  in  the  home  and  on  the  farm.  Prob- 
ably, too,  no  fields  of  work  offer  more  monotonous 
toil  than  the  home  and  farm  if  it  is  uninspired  by 
power-giving  knowledge.  The  results  of  the  com- 
bination of  knowledge  and  work  relieve  the  monot- 
ony of  the  work  and  make  effective  the  knowledge. 

Elementary  education  in  agriculture  and  domestic 
science,  if  properly  organized,  will  perform  some  of 
the  task  of  part-time  education  for  young  workers. 
By  their  means  young  people  will  be  more  closely 
brought  into  touch  with  their  surroundings,  and 
knowledge  which  they  get  will  be  vitalized. 

It  is  important  to  remember,  however,  how  neces- 
sary it  is  to  extend  the  time  of  education  beyond 


224  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

ordinary  school  days.  The  young  man  going  to 
work  on  the  home  farm  at  fourteen  to  sixteen  needs 
especially  to  have  the  help  of  supplementary  educa- 
tion if  he  is  to  develop  into  a  broad-gauged,  con- 
tented and  progressive  farmer.  What  he  gains  in 
the  elementary  schools  will  often  be  too  general  and 
not  immediately  applicable;  what  he  learns  in  the 
part-time  school  in  short  winter  courses  or  from  the 
itinerant  teacher  should  be  that  which  he  can  put 
into  immediate  practise.  New  methods  are  con- 
stantly being  applied  and  new  discoveries  of  science 
made  which  he  ought  to  apply  to  his  work.  The 
part-time  school  should  be  a  source  of  the  latest 
scientific  and  practical  applications  in  agriculture. 
By  coordination  he  gains  a  practical  knowledge  of 
chemistry,  physics,  drawing,  mathematics,  geology, 
botany  and  zoology.  The  way  is  opened  up  for 
limitless  expansion  of  knowledge  of  a  kind  that  the 
farmer  can  put  into  almost  daily  use. 

Unfortunately,  the  schools  have  interested  them- 
selves very  little  in  the  future  of  their  pupils  after 
leaving  school.  Except  for  the  occasional  interest 
which  teachers  take  in  favored  individuals,  the 
school  knows  nothing  of  what  happens  to  the  thou- 
sands who  leave  along  the  way.  Very  few  cities 
keep  any  adequate  statistics  which  give  the  age  or 
qualifications  of  those  who  leave.  No  facts  are 
available  as  to  where  the  pupils  go  on  leaving  and 
no  attempt  is  made  to  determine,  even  for  any  con- 


PART-TIME   EDUCATION  225 

siderable  group,  what  outlook  they  may  have  for 
advancement  or  how  the  school  might  cooperate  in 
that  advancement. 

Part-time  education  takes  into  account  all  of  these 
things.  It  implies  a  study  of  industry  as  related  to 
the  school  and  the  school  as  related  to  industry.  It 
implies  also  a  study  of  the  articulation  of  school 
and  work  in  such  a  way  that  the  children  who  have 
gone  to  work  may  receive  that  kind  of  instruction 
best  suited  to  their  advancement  in  the  work  in 
which  they  are  engaged  or  to  the  training  of  those 
employed  in  "dead-end"  jobs  so  that  they  may  pre- 
pare for  work  suitable  for  adults,  and  it  implies  a 
constant  cooperation  with  young  and  old  who  de- 
sire to  progress  and  to  keep  pace  with  the  new 
developments  of  science  and  art  in  their  vocations. 

Part-time  education  should  be  compulsory  for 
children  between  fourteen  and  eighteen  who  have 
gone  to  work  in  order  to  take  advantage  of  the 
knowledge  which  they  have  acquired  in  school  and 
which  they  will  forget  after  a  brief  time.  The 
school  must  bridge  the  chasm  from  the  school  to  the 
office  or  shop,  the  farm  or  home,  and  make  the  way 
as  inviting  as  possible  in  order  that  a  new  spirit  of 
self -education  may  be  infused  into  the  young  which 
will  carry  them  afterward  into  the  evening  schools, 
correspondence  and  extension  courses  and  intelli- 
gent reading. 

This  view  is  supported  by  the  well-known  fact 


226  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

^  that  a  large  part — probably  ninety  per  cent. — of  all 
that  the  children  learn  is  forgotten  within  a  brief 
space  after  leaving  school.  When  school  courses 
are  organized  for  purposeful  and  efficient  teaching, 
the  amount  of  this  educational  loss  will  be  dimin- 
ished. At  present  a  very  efficient  system  of  part- 
time  schools  is  needed  to  save  as  much  as  possible 
of  the  unassimilated  knowledge  poured  into  the 
minds  by  the  cramming  process  of  teaching. 

What  is  here  said  concerning  the  need  of  part- 
time  education  for  those  who  leave  at  an  early  age 
is  applicable  just  as  forcibly  to  those  who  leave  in 
the  higher  grades.  At  no  point  is  the  school  work 
articulated  with  the  work  of  the  world.  The  high- 
school  graduate  and  the  college  graduate  are  just  as 
far  from  harmonious  relation  with  a  job  as  are  the 
industrial  workers.  Part-time  education  is  needed 
for  them  in  order  to  make  efficient  their  knowledge 
by  putting  the  useful  part  of  it  in  working  order  and 
to  keep  them  abreast  with  the  state  of  science  and 
art  of  their  vocations. 

Important  as  are  the  needs  for  part-time  educa- 
tion all  along  the  line,  the  most  pressing  needs  are  in 
industrial,  home  and  farm  work.  Here  millions  of 
people  work  in  productive  industry.  The  prosperity 
of  the  country  rests  upon  them.  Let  them  be  well 
trained,  for  we  must  expect  much  of  them.  The 
needs  of  professional  workers  have  been  somewhat 
supplied  by  all-time  vocational  schools — the  indus- 


PART-TIME   EDUCATION  227 


trial  workers  scarcely  at  all.  No  appreciable  effort 
has  yet  been  made  except  in  a  dozen  isolated  cities 
to  give  part-time  industrial  work,  and  only  in  the 
short  courses  of  agricultural  colleges  has  there  been 
any  serious  attempt  to  give  part-time  education  for 
farmers.  The  idea  has  been  applied  in  home-project 
work  for  young  children  in  agriculture  and  domestic 
science,  but  not  systematically  for  the  practical 
training  of  farmers  or  home-makers  and  their  con- 
tinued guidance. 

While  the  first  end  of  education  must  always  be 
the  training  of  the  immature  youth,  no  opportunity 
should  be  lost  to  extend  the  advantages  of  knowl- 
edge to  every  person,  young  and  old.  Knowledge 
supplementary  to  the  daily  task  of  the  worker  may 
be  supplied  almost  universally  with  great  profit  and 
inspiration.  Some  mature  workers  are  in  a  position 
to  profit  by  seasonal  part-time  schools.  The  farmer 
with  free  time  on  his  hands  in  the  winter  will  be  in 
a  position  to  profit  by  short  courses  in  agriculture ; 
the  carpenter  and  plumber  have  off  seasons  when 
organized  courses  could  be  advantageously  taken; 
likewise  in  many  occupations  there  are  dull  seasons 
or  parts  of  a  day  which  could  be  utilized  in  supply- 
ing the  deficiencies  of  the  vocational  knowledge  of 
workers.  For  the  larger  number  of  mature  work- 
ers, however,  the  evening  school  must  be  the  sole 
reliance  for  regular  educational  courses.  Here  the 
opportunity    is    given    to    the    strong    ambitious 


228  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

worker  to  extend  his  trade  knowledge  and  thereby 
increase  his  efficiency  and  to  keep  up  to  date  in  his 
vocation  without  loss  of  time  from  his  daily  labor. 

Although  unsuited  to  the  young,  the  evening 
school  may  be  useful  to  the  mature  man  who  is 
seeking  to  overcome  his  deficiencies  and  to  gain  new 
power.  But  the  courses  must  be  extremely  practical. 
There  must  be  no  lost  motion,  no  attempt  at  general 
training,  no  deferring  of  concrete  results,  no  effort 
at  mental  discipline.  The  fitting  of  definite  units  of 
knowledge  into  the  operations  of  skill  is  the  best 
result  to  be  achieved  by  part-time  education  in 
evening  schools  for  the  more  mature  workers. 

In  all  kinds  of  part-time  education,  whether  in 
day  or  evening  schools,  which  aim  to  extend  trade 
/or  professional  knowledge,  there  is  a  particular 
/  necessity  that  the  courses  be  kept  as  definite  as  possi- 
ble. The  so-called  "unit  course,"  which  seeks  in  a 
given  set  of  lessons  to  impart  a  definite  piece  of 
knowledge  or  to  develop  a  particular  skill,  should  be 
adopted.  Such  a  course  has  the  advantage  of  giving 
tangible  results  in  brief  time.  The  worker  profits 
immediately  by  it  and  is  encouraged  to  take  further 
courses.  On  the  other  hand,  a  course  which  leads 
to  an  ultimate  goal  and  whose  utility  can  not  be 
immediately  seen  too  often  discourages  the  worker 
from  any  educational  effort  at  all. 

A  program  of  part-time  education  should  be  as 
broad  as  the  needs  of  the  workers  in  all  lines  of  use- 


PART-TIME    EDUCATION  229 

ful  employment.  It  will  require,  therefore,  a  minute 
analysis  of  the  possibilities  of  supplementary  educa- 
tion in  every  profession,  vocation,  trade  or  calling 
in  which  men  engage  in  order  to  determine  the  edu- 
cational needs  of  the  workers  and  the  most  practical 
way  to  meet  them.  It  will,  of  course,  make  its  earli- 
est efforts  where  the  need  is  greatest.  At  present 
that  need  is  most  acute  among  the  millions  who 
work  with  their  hands  in  productive  labor. 

Four  fields  of  great  promise  open  up  for  part- 
time  plans  for  the  training  of  productive  workers  in 
day,  evening  and  seasonal  classes.  First,  the  train- 
ing for  workers  engaged  in  juvenile  or  specialized 
occupations  which  will  enable  them  to  gain  favor- 
able entrance  into  trades  suitable  to  adults  and 
through  continuation  schools  to  enlarge  their  civic 
intelligence.  Second,  the  training  of  workers  who 
have  found  a  suitable  trade  or  calling  to  enable 
them  to  improve  themselves  in  efficiency  in  that 
trade  or  calling.  By  such  training,  workers  should 
be  enabled  to  do  their  work  more  intelligently  and 
skilfully  and  to  understand  its  relation  to  the  whole 
process  and  should  gain  such  an  understanding  of 
the  organization  of  industry  that  promotion  and 
higher  positions  will  be  possible.  Third,  the  train- 
ing of  the  great  numbers  of  girls  engaged  in  auto- 
matic employments  in  practical  household  arts. 
Fourth,  the  training  of  men  and  women  for  per- 
sonal efficiency  in  every-day  duties  outside  their 


230  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

profession,  trade  or  calling.  Such  training  might  be 
called  training  for  conservation.  It  should  relate  to 
the  proper  utilization  of  materials,  of  food  and 
dress,  the  saving  of  fuel,  the  sanitation  of  one's  per- 
son and  habitation,  the  care  of  the  sick  and  preven- 
tion of  diseases,  the  making  of  gardens  and  lawns, 
and  all  the  activities  which  go  to  make  up  the  round 
of  duties  of  the  average  person. 


CHAPTER  XII 

EXTENSION  AND  CORRESPONDENCE  WORK 

The  place  of  correspondence  and  extension  work  in  the  edu- 
cational system — What  has  been  accomplished — Private  cor- 
respondence schools — Demonstration  shops  and  laboratories 
necessary  for  concrete  direction — Itinerant  teachers — Three 
types  of  correspondence  schools — Project  system  of  instruc- 
tion— Maintenance  of  centers  of  instruction — Personal  assist- 
ance necessary — Special  opportunities  in  business  training  by 
correspondence — The  chamber  of  commerce — Centers  for 
home  training — Agricultural  education  by  correspondence — 
The  place  of  the  university  in  correspondence  and  extension 
work. 

The  purpose  of  the  reorganization  of  the  educa- 
tional system  along  vocational  lines  has  been  stated 
repeatedly  in  this  volume.  Generally  speaking,  it  is 
education  for  occupational  and  civic  efficiency,  not 
for  an  inconsiderable  minority  of  the  people,  but 
approximately  for  one  hundred  per  cent,  of  our 
citizens.  Roughly  speaking,  it  is  divided  into  pre- 
vocational  and  vocational  training.  The  former  is 
to  be  realized  by  our  present  elementary  schools 
after  they  have  been  shot  through  with  localized 
motives  and  concrete  subject-matter  as  a  basis  of 
instruction.  The  latter  is  to  be  realized  chiefly  by 
the  vocational  school — the  commercial  school  for 
business,  the  trade  school  for  industry,  the  agricul- 

231 


:rs 

pr 


232  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

tural  school  for  agriculture  and  the  school  of  house- 
hold science  and  management  for  the  home,  and  by 
supplementary  instruction  and  training  for  workers 
whose  time  for  self -improvement  is  limited. 

In  the  natural  order  of  things  there  will  still 
young  men  and  women  who  will  proceed  no  further 
in  regular  attendance  upon  public  schools  than  the 
age  of  fourteen  or  sixteen  years.  Some  young  men 
and  women  will  be  compelled  to  go  to  work  at  four- 
teen, fifteen  or  sixteen.  That  the  education  of  these 
young  men  and  women  may  go  on,  even  after  they 
have  begun  work,  that  they  may  increase  their  effi- 
ciency in  the  vineyard  of  life,  instruction  through 
continuation,  part-time  and  evening  schools  is  de- 
vised. But  there  will  still  be  many  young  men  and 
women  who  may  not  find  it  convenient  to  attend 
evening  or  continuation  schools  and  others  who  live 
in  sparsely  settled  regions  remote  from  the  centers 
of  advanced  educational  progress,  but  who,  how- 
ever, would  be  able  and  eager  to  pursue  their  educa- 
tion by  intelligent  study  at  home.  Part-time  instruc- 
tion, theoretically,  will  provide  for  the  educational 
needs  of  young  men  from  fourteen  to  eighteen  who 
must  work  all  or  a  part  of  the  time.  It  really  is  not 
intended  to  do  much  for  men  and  women  past  the 
age  of  eighteen.  Here  is  an  opportunity  for  educa- 
tion to  reach  innumerable  learners,  fired  with  native 
enthusiasm,  moved  by  a  high  order  of  ambition  and 
capable  of  more  or  less  sustained  effort.     Corre- 


EXTENSION    WORK  233 

spondence  study  has  already  become  an  important 
element  in  the  continued  education  of  mature  work- 
ers, particularly  in  business  and  in  the  trades.  So 
far  the  work  has  been  performed  largely  by  private 
agencies.  Exception  should  be  noted  with  regard  to 
the  extension  divisions  now  being  maintained  by 
several  state  universities,  notably  those  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wisconsin,  begun  in  1906;  the  University 
of  Kansas,  begun  in  1909;  University  of  Minnesota, 
begun  in  1911,  and  Harvard  University,  now  several 
years  old.  In  agriculture  several  million  mature 
workers  are  reached  every  year  through  the  exten- 
sion divisions  of  agricultural  colleges,  with  their 
railroad  specials,  short  courses,  farmers'  institutes 
and  through  the  farm-bulletin  service  of  the  United 
States  Department  of  Agriculture  and  the  land- 
grant  agricultural  colleges.  Various  private  agen- 
cies— the  banks,  the  railroads  and  the  manufactories 
of  farm  machinery — have  made  considerable  prog- 
ress in  promoting  better  farming.  Systematic  train- 
ing for  the  farm  by  correspondence  study  through 
public  agency  has  scarcely  been  attempted. 

The  weakness  of  undertaking  the  education  of 
mature  workers  through  private  correspondence 
schools  is  not  difficult  to  find.  Fundamentally,  the 
weakness  is  that  such  schools  are  operated  for  profit 
rather  than  for  service.  Private  agencies  can  not 
afford  to  experiment.  Creditable  as  much  of  their 
work  has  been,  they  leave  much  undone  for  the  very 


234  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

reason  that  they  must  be  self-sustaining.  More- 
over, such  instruction  lacks  the  directness  which 
similar  instruction  through  public  agency  might 
attain,  simply  because  efficient  education  is  not 
measured  by  the  immediate  cost  of  imparting  in- 
struction. In  this  case  the  results  are  not  circum- 
scribed by  the  service  done  in  behalf  of  a  single  gen- 
eration. From  the  public  point  of  view,  education 
is  cumulative  in  its  results  and  endures  to  remote 
periods  and  survives  through  many  generations. 
We  are,  therefore,  willing  to  tax  posterity  for  edu- 
cation in  the  present  and  we  rightfully  proclaim  the 
defects  of  correspondence  study  and  extension  work 
which  fail  to  take  cognizance  of  the  future.  In  a 
sentence  or  two,  private  correspondence  schools  are 
doing  their  work  as  well  as  reasonably  might  be 
expected  and  thousands  of  young  men  have  made 
notable  progress  under  their  direction.  Merely  be- 
cause the  public  can  bear  greater  burdens  of  expense 
in  maintaining  correspondence  instruction,  now 
comparatively  inefficient  because  it  lacks  opportunity 
for  practical  demonstration  in  conjunction  with 
theory,  public  agencies  should  take  over  this  de- 
partment of  instruction. 

Any  form  of  education  is  subject  to  glaring  fail- 
ures which  is  undertaken  at  long  range,  particularly 
because  of  the  ever-present  tendency  to  teach  young 
men  and  women  "what  they  ought  to  know,"  rather 
than  "what  they  want  to  learn."     In  fact,  this  ap- 


EXTENSION   WORK  235 

pears  to  be  one  of  the  chief  troubles  of  classical 
instruction.  Merely  because  the  public  is  to  pay  the 
bills,  correspondence  and  extension  work  is  subject 
to  no  such  limitations  as  those  which  encompass  the 
private  school.  The  ideal  system  of  correspondence 
instruction  would  include  the  maintenance  of  acces- 
sible demonstration  shops,  farms  or  laboratories  to 
which  the  student  might  come  for  concrete  direction. 
The  private  school  can  not  maintain  these  centers 
because  the  cost  is  too  great  to  be  borne  by  indi- 
vidual students.  Unless  there  is  a  delicately  ad- 
justed coordination  between  study  and  work,  be- 
tween school  and  shop,  between  lesson  and  task, 
instruction  is  to  that  extent  a  failure.  The  Univer- 
sity of  Wisconsin  has  overcome  this  patent  handicap 
to  extension  study  among  the  workers  of  that  state 
by  employing  itinerant  teachers  who  take  up  with 
the  students  directly  and  personally  the  matter  of 
coordination  between  study  and  work.  In  the  initial 
stages  of  instruction  by  this  method  the  peripatetic 
teacher  may  be  employed  to  good  advantage.  As 
the  number  of  students  increases  about  a  given  cen- 
ter, additional  provision  for  direct  contact  with 
instructors  and  laboratories  may  be  provided. 

The  suggestion  made  by  the  Wisconsin  Report  on 
Industrial  and  Agricultural  Training  in  1911  re- 
garding the  development  of  university  extension 
work  is  peculiarly  applicable  to  public  correspond- 
ence and  extension  work  generally.     "There  is  a 


236  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

parallel  between  its  methods  and  work  and  those  of 
the  early  church  organizations.  It  was  necessary 
at  first  to  have  some  kind  of  missionary  work,  as 
perhaps  some  little  local  demand  became  evident. 
Then  circuit  riders  were  sent  around;  men  who 
preached  one  Sunday  in  one  little  town  and  the  next 
Sunday  in  another ;  the  circuits  grew  smaller  as  time 
went  on  until  churches  were  built,  pastors  secured 
and  permanent  organizations  established  in  each 
town.  The  university  extension  work  can  follow 
the  same  method.  When  little  centers  are  estab- 
lished, permanent  buildings  erected  and  permanent 
teachers  secured,  then  the  university  extension  work 
can  be  used  as  a  sort  of  circuit-riding  organization 
for  still  higher  grades  of  work  until  the  needs  of  the 
higher  grades  are  supplied  by  permanent  organiza- 
tions." So  with  correspondence  centers  and  so  with 
extension  work,  whether  the  agency  be  the  univer- 
sity or  the  nearest  vocational  school  where  residence 
study  prevails. 

Correspondence  schools  as  now  maintained  are 
divided  into  three  distinct  types.  First,  there  are  a 
number  of  schools  like  the  International  Corre- 
spondence School  at  Scranton,  Pennsylvania,  which 
are  privately  endowed  and  privately  maintained. 
This  school,  established  in  1891,  was  organized  for 
the  purpose  of  "teaching  employed  persons  the 
science  of  their  trades  or  professions,  preparing 
misplaced  and  dissatisfied  people  for  congenial  or 


EXTENSION    WORK  237 

better  paying  work,  giving  young  unemployed  per- 
sons the  training  necessary  to  enable  them  to  start 
at  good  salaries  in  chosen  vocations."  Others  like 
it  are  the  American  School  of  Dress  Making  at 
Kansas  City,  the  American  School  of  Home  Eco- 
nomics at  Chicago,  and  the  American  School  of 
Correspondence  at  Chicago.  The  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton Institute  of  New  York  City  is  one  of  the  most 
successful  private  correspondence  schools.  It  un- 
dertakes to  present  by  organized  information 
courses,  training  for  the  higher  reaches  of  business, 
for  the  managing  and  directing  vocations.  Its  work 
should  be  helpful  in  formulating  certain  depart- 
ments of  public  commercial  education  by  corre- 
spondence. The  Sheldon  School  of  Salesmanship, 
a  private  institution  of  Chicago,  Illinois,  is  doing 
notable  work  by  correspondence.  Thousands  of 
men  employed  as  salesmen  have  been  able  to  get  a 
new  grip  on  their  work  after  pursuing  the  course 
offered  by  this  school.  These  are  conspicuous  ex- 
amples of  work  being  done  by  many  institutions. 
Second,  there  are  the  correspondence  courses  main- 
tained by  large  corporations  for  the  benefit  of  their 
employees.  The  Union  Pacific  Railroad's  Educa- 
tional Bureau  of  Information  is  typical  of  this  class. 
Its  announced  object  is  to  assist  employees  to  assume 
greater  responsibilities,  to  increase  the  knowledge 
and  efficiency  of  employees  and  to  prepare  prospec- 
tive employees  for  service.    The  School  of  Railway 


238  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Signaling  at  Utica,  New  York,  which  has  an  advis- 
ory board  of  practical  railroad  signal  engineers  from 
fifteen  different  roads,  has  similar  objects.  In  this 
class  might  be  named  the  International  Typograph- 
ical Union  Course  of  Instruction,  which  is  one  of 
the  few  successful  attempts  of  an  organized  body  of 
workmen  to  provide  for  the  instruction  of  its  mem- 
bers other  than  by  apprenticeship.  Also  the  prac- 
tical aid  given  to  organized  carpenters  through  the 
medium  of  their  publication,  The  Carpenter.  The 
third  type  of  education  by  correspondence  is  that 
maintained  at  public  expense  and  carried  on  by  sev- 
eral universities,  as,  for  instance,  the  University  of 
Wisconsin. 

The  financial  success  of  private  schools  of  corre- 
spondence, the  wide-spread  interest  shown  by  the 
employees  of  private  corporations  for  whom  educa- 
tional opportunities  are  opened,  the  increasing  pat- 
ronage of  the  university  extension  courses  go  to 
show  the  need  for  systematizing  this  form  of  in- 
struction, of  making  out  of  it  a  real  vital  force  in 
education.  All  goes  to  show,  moreover,  the  impor- 
tance of  doing  efficiently  through  public  agency 
what  is  now  done  more  or  less  inefficiently  through 
private  agency. 

That  correspondence  study  and  extension  work 
may  fulfill  their  greatest  purposes  and  ends,  the 
project  system  of  instruction  must  be  substituted 
for  the  course  system  of  instruction  which  begins  in 


EXTENSION    WORK  239 

the  kindergarten  and  avowedly  ends  only  after  nine- 
teen or  twenty  years  of  residence  study — through  t 
the  grades,  the  high  school,  the  academic  depart- 
ments of  the  university  and  the  professional  school  *- 
— but  which,  rather,  begins  nowhere  and  ends  no-  \ 
where.  The  time  is  gone  when  men  and  women  - 
can  wait  twenty  years  to  gather  any  of  the  economic 
fruits  of  education.  Competition  is  too  keen  in  all 
realms  of  endeavor.  Results  must  approximate  the 
immediate.  Furthermore,  the  project  system  avoids 
the  routine  of  an  educational  curriculum,  which,  we 
may  believe,  has  stifled  the  ambitions  of  innumer- 
able young  men  and  women  merely  because  their 
progress  was  defined  and  limited  by  the  progress  of 
a  group.  Boys  and  girls  who  are  able  to  do  a  given 
piece  of  work  in  three  years  quite  as  well  as  the 
group  can  do  it  in  four,  should  be  permitted  to  finish 
in  the  shorter  time.  The  time  standard  in  education 
is  wrong  altogether,  but  it  is  exceptionally  perni- 
cious in  correspondence  work  where  progress  is  even 
more  an  individual  matter  than  in  the  residence 
school. 

If  we  accept  as  settled  the  pronouncement  that 
correspondence  study  and  extension  instruction  are 
devised  generally  for  the  mature  worker  over 
eighteen  years  of  age,  to  fill  the  gap  between  part- 
time  education  and  unregulated  and  unsystematized 
home  reading,  we  may  next  address  ourselves  to  a 
consideration  of  means  and  methods. 


240  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

For  industry,  for  business  and  for  the  home,  the 
possibilities  of  training  by  correspondence  are  al- 
most limitless.  In  each  case  the  city  is  the  natural 
unit  of  instruction.  Correspondence  departments 
may  be  maintained  as  adjuncts  of  the  trade  school, 
the  commercial  school,  the  agricultural  school,  the 
school  for  home  education.  There  is  certain  to  be 
a  mutual  advantage  in  this  arrangement,  since,  for 
instance,  the  school  will  have  just  one  more  avenue 
of  approach  to  the  shop,  and  to  actual  life  in  indus- 
try, and  correspondence  instruction  may  enjoy  the 
immediate  fruits  of  whatever  readjustments  the 
trade  school  suggests.  This  form  of  instruction 
may,  therefore,  dovetail  into  the  established  voca- 
tional school  system  and  the  instruction  itself  serve 
the  purpose  of  the  continuation  school.  The  be- 
ginnings of  industrial  education  by  correspondence 
may  be  confined  to  a  few  leading  industries,  as,  for 
instance,  one  of  the  hand  trades. 

Suppose  an  industrial  trade  school  in  carpentry 
should  undertake  instruction  by  correspondence.  It 
is  to  be  assumed  that  the  student  not  only  knows 
first  principles,  but  that  in  all  likelihood  he  is  equal  in 
practise  to  the  efficiency  of  the  trade-school  gradu- 
ate ;  that  he  is  already  employed  as  a  carpenter  and 
earning  wages  as  such.  Without  undertaking  to 
lay  out  a  course  for  such  a  student — a  matter  for 
the  most  expert  carpenters — his  instruction  natu- 


EXTENSION    WORK  241 

rally  will  begin  where  the  vocational  school  leaves 
off. 

The  University  of  Kansas  maintains  a  "voca- 
tional course"  given  by  correspondence  for  appren- 
tices and  workers  in  the  carpenter's  trade  that  is 
suggestive.  It  consists  altogether  of  one  hundred 
and  forty  assignments — twenty  each  of  shop  math- 
ematics, architectural  drawing  and  architectural 
design,  and  ten  each  of  free-hand  and  mechanical 
drawing,  elements  of  graphic  statics,  materials  of 
building  construction,  bookkeeping  and  accounting, 
cost  keeping  for  contractors,  and  two  optional 
studies — machine  drafting  and  the  law  of  contracts. 

From  the  very  nature  of  carpentry,  so  much  a 
matter  of  expert  handicraft,  centers  where  personal 
assistance  may  be  obtained  and  personal  direc- 
tion given,  are  necessary.  The  establishment  of 
such  centers  falls  within  the  province  of  the  trade 
school  for  carpenters.  They  should  be  maintained 
as  a  department  of  the  carpenters'  trade  school.  Ex- 
cept in  the  cases  of  the  largest  cities,  a  single  center 
would  be  adequate  for  each  trade,  even  though  more 
than  one  trade  school  were  found  necessary.  It 
may  be  found  expedient  to  establish  temporary  cen- 
ters in  industrial  plants  or  on  particular  "jobs" 
where  a  considerable  number  of  men  pursuing  their 
education  by  correspondence  are  employed.  Peri- 
patetic instructors  may  be  employed  to  advantage 


242  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

in  these  shifting  centers,  and  it  appears  a  very  wise 
plan  to  have  them  visit  men  at  work. 

In  business  training  by  correspondence,  the 
commercial  high  school  has  a  splendid  opportunity 
to  bring  together  in  the  commercial  centers  the 
young  men  just  beginning  a  business  career  and 
men  who  have  already  attained  success  and  who 
have  a  practical  knowledge  of  business  science  and 
practise.  Here  will  be  found  mature  workers  who 
have  the  most  elementary  training  for  business,  and 
instruction  by  correspondence  is  the  only  means  by 
which  they  may  be  reached.  Instruction  by  corre- 
spondence, therefore,  will  comprehend  the  entire 
program  of  the  commercial  high  school  rather  than 
follow  it,  as  in  the  case  of  industrial  education  by 
correspondence  and  the  industrial  trade  school.  The 
most  practicable  centers  for  commercial  training 
will  consist  of  the  associations  already  organized 
for  practically  every  business.  Every  state  and 
many  of  the  larger  cities  have  separate  associations 
made  up  of  retail  grocers,  retail  hardware  dealers, 
lumber  dealers,  manufacturers,  ice  dealers,  electric 
railway  managers,  florists,  coal  operators,  coal  deal- 
ers, dairymen,  laundry  owners,  hotel  keepers,  etc. 
Certain  information  and  training  is  common  to  or 
needed  by  every  business.  To  this  extent,  the  ex- 
periences of  the  members  of  all  business  men's  asso- 
ciations may  be  drawn  upon  for  practical  helps  in 
formulating  correspondence  work  and  maintaining 


EXTENSION    WORK  243 

the  maximum  effectiveness  at  the  center  of  instruc- 
tion. As  the  chamber  of  commerce  of  the  German 
city  is  the  "godfather'*  of  the  German  commercial 
school,  so  also  must  the  chamber  of  commerce  be 
the  godfather  of  commercial  education  in  America, 
including  particularly  the  extension  department.  In 
many  cases,  men  actively  identified  with  the  local 
chamber  of  commerce  can  be  employed  in  directing 
capacities  in  education  for  business,  both  residence 
study  and  correspondence  study.  Perhaps  educa- 
tion for  business  will  always  remain  as  a  more  altru- 
istic factor  in  civic  life  than  business  itself  but  this 
is  only  natural  since  the  business  man  is  apt  to  be 
more  altruistic  in  addressing  young  students  than 
in  addressing  a  customer. 

In  training  for  household  science  and  manage- 
ment by  correspondence,  students  may  be  brought 
into  the  vocational  school  centers  as  often  as  pos- 
sible for  practical  tests  of  efficiency.  The  admirable 
work  done  in  training  for  home  management  by  one 
or  two  private  correspondence  schools  suggests  how 
much  greater  progress  may  be  made  if  this  training 
is  supplemented  by  occasional  personal  lectures  or 
conferences  and  by  practical  demonstration  work, 
for  instance,  in  the  class-room  of  the  continuation 
or  evening  school.  In  the  country  these  centers  may 
be  maintained  in  connection  with  the  agricultural 
high  school  and  the  work  administered  somewhat 
after  the  plan  of  instruction  by  agricultural  agents 


244  LEARNING  TO   EARN 

in  the  counties  of  many  states.  Whether  the  unit  of 
instruction  in  household  science  and  management  by 
correspondence  is  the  city,  the  single  county,  a  group 
of  counties  or  the  state,  is  unimportant,  except  as 
the  larger  unit  makes  supplementary  personal  help 
more  difficult.  The  territorial  boundaries  of  the 
unit  will  depend  upon  the  number  of  young  women 
pursuing  the  work. 

So  many  different  systems  of  disseminating  in- 
formation about  agriculture  exist  in  the  several 
states  that  a  question  arises  in  regard  to  the  num- 
ber of  centers  for  education  by  correspondence. 
Agricultural  education  by  correspondence  is  de- 
signed to  reach  these  persons  remote  from  great 
centers,  both  mature  and  immature,  to  whom  the 
agricultural  high  school  is  inaccessible  and  who  have 
reached  the  age  in  life  when  greater  efficiency,  if 
achieved  at  all,  must  be  achieved  by  home  study.  On 
the  whole,  it  would  seem  that  the  agricultural  col- 
leges which  are  engaged  in  pretentious  extension 
work  of  other  kinds  are  best  equipped  to  make  the 
beginnings  in  correspondence  work.  Through  the 
corn  clubs,  canning  clubs,  potato  clubs,  agricultural 
and  horticultural  societies  and  breeders'  associa- 
tions, many  of  which  are  already  fostered  by  the 
land-grant  colleges,  correspondence  study  can  be 
materially  aided.  Then  there  are  the  corn  and 
wheat  specials,  the  demonstration  farms,  the  re- 
search   laboratories    and    the    farmers'    institutes, 


EXTENSION    WORK  245 

worthy  extension  enterprises  in  themselves,  which 
may  be  employed  as  centers  for  gathering  in  home 
students  as  well  as  those  who  are  not  enlisted  for 
regular  study.  While  some  of  these  forms  of  ex- 
tension work  are  designed  and  carried  on  especially 
for  young  men,  it  is  not  because  older  men  are  be- 
yond the  subject-matter  of  instruction,  but  because 
only  young  farmers  can  be  induced  to  take  an  active 
interest. 

The  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  is 
cioing  a  notable  work  in  the  publication  of  farm 
bulletins  and  in  the  gathering  and  distribution  of 
information  about  crops.     Much  of  this  informa- 
tion, however,  is  badly  prepared  for  the  purpose  it 
is  to  serve.     Bulletins  which  specifically  undertake 
to  set  forth  the  principles  and  practises  of  a  given 
process  too  frequently  fail  because  the  language  is 
vague  in  its  meaning  or  capable  of  being  understood 
only  by  those  persons  who  already  possess  the  given 
information  and,  therefore,  have  no  use   for  the 
bulletin.    Men  who  prepare  these  bulletins  need  to 
keep  more  closely  in  touch  with  actual  farmers,  and 
they  need  to  understand  the  extent  of  ignorance 
about,  say,  pruning  grapes  when  they  begin  to  pre- 
pare a  bulletin  on  this  subject.    Nevertheless,  these 
bulletins  are  an  invaluable  aid  to  countless  farmers 
and  may  be  made  up  for  greater  service  if  rewritten 
by  men  in  touch  with  active  farmers  through  corre- 
spondence schools  or  part-time  classes. 


246  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

No  serious  fault  mav  be  found  with  extension 
work  in  business,  agriculture  and  household  science, 
except  perhaps  that  in  agriculture,  extension  work 
is  left  too  often  to  men  who  are  merely  scientists, 
not  farmers  at  all.  There  is  always  a  danger  in  such 
instances  that  agricultural  extension  work  will  lapse 
into  a  routine  of  formal  exercises  and  lose  its  prac- 
tical significance.  What  farmers  need  is  not  so 
much  information  in  regard  to  the  management  of 
the  ideal  farm,  but  information  with  regard  to 
operating  the  farm  as  it  is.  The  same  applies  to 
extension  work  in  industry,  business  and  the  home. 

There  are  apt  to  be  serious  duplications  in  corre- 
spondence and  extension  work  unless  the  adminis- 
tration of  it  is  carefully  planned.  At  the  present 
time,  many  of  the  universities  are  doing  essentially 
all  grades  of  work  for  agriculture,  for  industry,  for 
business  and  for  the  home.  As  far  as  possible  the 
centers  of  correspondence  study  should  approach 
the  homes  of  the  students  that  they  may  be  within 
reach  geographically.  For  this  reason,  the  voca- 
tional school  of  relatively  secondary  grade  should 
assume  charge  wherever  and  whenever  its  organiza- 
tion will  permit  the  administration  of  another  de- 
partment. But  it  may  be  several  years  before  the 
system  of  trade,  commercial,  agricultural  and  home 
training  schools  will  be  sufficiently  well  organized 
to  undertake  a  comprehensive  educational  program 
by  correspondence  and  extension  study,  and  until 


EXTENSION    WORK  247 

that  time  the  universities  which  have  been  first  in 
the  field  may  continue  their  work  of  secondary 
grade.  Ultimately,  they  will  have  to  confine  their 
efforts  in  this  particular  to  work  of  an  advanced 
grade  and  by  a  system  of  intimate  coopera- 
tion, act  in  an  advisory  capacity  with  educational 
centers  of  a  lower  grade.  The  university  may  also 
direct  and  guide  the  reading  of  thousands  of  young 
men  and  women  remote  from  extension  centers  and 
thus  connect  up  their  home  study  with  the  opportu- 
nities available  in  near-by  libraries.  A  great  deal 
of  the  information  collected  by  the  federal  bureaus 
and  departments — the  Department  of  Commerce, 
the  Department  of  Labor,  the  Department  of  Agri- 
culture and  the  Department  of  the  Interior — is  not 
available  to  the  mass  of  the  people  who  need  the 
information,  since  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
hardly  know  that  it  exists.  Moreover,  the  informa- 
tion will  have  to  be  reorganized  to  suit  the  needs 
of  the  people  who  are  to  use  it,  rather  than  to  sat- 
isfy the  statisticians  and  scientists  who  prepare  it. 
Herein  the  universities  may  perform  an  important 
function  not  only  in  behalf  of  correspondence  and 
extension  study  but  in  behalf  of  the  vocational 
school,  by  which  it  is  needed  quite  as  much  as  by 
centers  for  extension  teaching. 

For  a  great  many  years,  it  is  important  that  no 
sustained  effort  be  made  to  convert  vocational  edu- 
cation to  a  rigid  system.     Rather,  its  value  during 


248  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

the  initial  stages  will  consist  somewhat  in  its  elas- 
ticity— in  its  not  being  a  system.  In  this  respect, 
the  university  may  serve  a  useful  purpose  as  a  scout 
to  determine  the  needs  of  workers  in  many  fields; 
to  formulate  the  educational  data  required  to  meet 
the  needs  and  to  develop  the  centers  from  which  it 
may  be  imparted. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   LIBRARY   AND   THE   WORKER 

Part  of  the  library  in  universal  education — Printed  matter  is 
universal  in  scope — All  classes  should  be  served — Libraries 
weak  on  the  vocational  side — Useful  arts  departments  success- 
ful— Branches  in  industrial  and  mercantile  plants — Chicago's 
experience — The  Marshall  Field  Store  library — Practical  value 
of  correlated  reading — Library  for  agriculture — Vocational 
guidance  literature. 

The  object  of  education  is  to  fit  men  continu- 
ously to  play  their  part  in  the  world's  work.  By  a 
process  of  formal  schooling  the  child  is  instructed 
in  the  things  which  he  should  know  before  taking 
up  life's  work.  If  this  education  is  properly  ad- 
justed to  his  needs  the  transition  from  the  work  of 
the  school  to  the  work  of  the  world  is  easy.  He  is 
doing  real  work  before  leaving  school,  and  it  be- 
comes merely  a  matter  of  emphasis  whether  the 
school  or  the  world  predominates.  Gradually,  the  di- 
rect work  with  the  school  ceases  and  the  pupil  finds 
himself  a  full-sized  unit  in  industry,  agriculture, 
home  or  profession.  He  is  trained  to  begin  work, 
but  must  train  himself  for  success  and  advancement. 

Experience  is  the  largest  factor  in  his  future  edu- 
cation. If,  however,  the  school  has  impressed  upon 
him  that  education  is  a  process  of  continuous  growth 

249 


250  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

he  will  seek  constantly  to  enrich  his  experience  with 
all  the  knowledge  he  can  get  from  whatever  source. 
Some  may  pursue  education  further  by  means  of 
part-time  schools,  night  schools  and  correspondence, 
but  many  will  not  pursue  formal  courses  of  instruc- 
tion at  least  for  any  great  length  of  time. 

The  supplementary  education  which  most  men 
will  get  after  leaving  school  must  come  from  indi- 
vidual study  of  books  and  other  printed  matter.  A  \ 
collection  of  books  is  the  university  of  most  men.  | 
The  public  library,  with  a  wisely  selected  collection 
of  books,  has  within  itself  the  potential  power  of 
being  the  postgraduate  institution  for  every  human 
being  within  its  reach. 

The  school  should  aim  to  start  the  individual 
along  the  road  and  should  graduate  him  into  the 
public  library,  where  many  needs  for  his  future 
self -education  should  be  supplied. 

The  library  is  the  "great  school  out  of  school." 
It  is  at  present  practically  the  only  means  of  educa- 
tion for  the  people  beyond  school  age.  The  world 
of  print  supplies  the  potential  needs  of  almost  every 
man.  No  matter  what  the  subject,  there  is  material 
printed  upon  it,  and  this  material  ought  to  be  avail- 
able for  public  use. 

The  last  few  years  have  seen  a  revolutionary 
change  in  the  breadth  of  printed  matter.  Whereas, 
formerly,  books  were  for  the  learned,  now,  they  are 
equally  for  the  learner.     Whereas,  formerly,  they 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER    251 

supplied  the  needs  of  the  professional  man,  now, 
they  supply  likewise  the  needs  of  the  artisan,  the 
farmer  and  the  home-maker.  Scarcely  a  profession 
or  a  trade  or  calling  is  followed  which  does  not  have 
its  historical  or  technical  literature.  Print  has  ex- 
panded and  is  rapidly  becoming  universal  in  its  use- 
fulness. 

The  public  library  stands  in  a  peculiarly  advan- 
tageous position  to  become  the  universal  university 
of  men  if  it  recognizes  its  social  obligation  and 
studies  the  needs  of  men  in  all  walks  of  life,  the 
industrial  worker,  the  farmer,  lawyer,  doctor,  home- 
maker,  storekeeper  and  salesman. 

Speaking  of  the  work  of  the  public  library  in 
vocational  education,  the  report  of  the  Indiana  Com- 
mission on  Industrial  and  Agricultural  Education 
said: 

"The  public  library  has  been  efficient  in  meeting 
the  demands  made  upon  it,  but  it  has  not  always 
been  efficient  in  helping  to  shape  the  demands  so 
that  all  people  will  be  benefited.  In  response  to  the 
needs  of  club  women  and  of  the  schools,  the  public 
library  has  developed  those  phases  which  will  meet 
their  demands.  They  have  given  ample  attention 
to  history,  fiction,  poetry,  art  and  literature.  No 
one  doubts  their  efficient  service  in  those  fields. 
Again,  in  response  to  an  evident  and  expressed  need 
the  library  has  brought  business  books  to  the  service 
of  business  men.  Likewise  the  doctor,  lawyer,  engi- 
neer, and  other  professional  people  have  had  their 


252  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

wants  satisfied  where  expressed.  But  the  industrial 
worker  has  not  been  reached  because  he  has  not 
been  in  a  position  to  know  that  the  library  can  do 
anything  for  him.  There  is  a  traditional  belief  that 
the  library  is  a  repository  for  the  humanities,  that 
it  is  primarily  a  place  where  the  work  of  the  world 
is  forgotten  in  the  calm  of  intellectuality.  To  such 
a  place  the  average  man  does  not  repair.  It  makes 
no  appeal  to  him.  There  is  no  point  of  contact  be- 
tween it  and  his  every-day  life.  Here  is  the  library's 
opportunity.  It  must  change  the  attitude  of  the 
industrial  worker  toward  it  by  giving  practical,  I 
every-day  service.  It  can  not  wait  until  he  comes 
to  it,  for  not  knowing,  he  will  never  come.  It  must 
go  to  him  and  show  what  it  can  do  for  him,  not  to 
interest  him  in  a  book  of  silly  fiction,  but  to  answer 
his  trade  questions  in  solving  his  daily  problems. 
The  library  must  first  establish  the  connection,  and 
the  rest  will  follow  as  a  case  of  practical  certainty. 
"How  can  this  be  done?  The  library  must  first 
be  equipped  with  the  materials  useful  to  industrial 
workers — books  and  pamphlets  descriptive  of  the 
industrial  processes,  biography  of  industrial  leaders, 
trade  publications,  labor  union  organs,  technical 
journals,  catalogs  and  anything  else  which  may 
interest  the  tradesman.  These,  of  course,  should  be 
adapted  to  the  particular  locality.  If  it  is  a  town 
where  a  single  industry  predominates,  the  literature 
of  that  industry  should  predominate.  If  it  is  a  place 
of  wide  diversification  of  industry,  the  scope  of  the 
library  should  correspond.  The  material  should  fit 
the  practical  needs  of  the  average  workers.  It  is 
useless  to  place  on  the  shelves  exhaustive  treatises 
on  mechanical  engineering  for  ordinary  machinists. 
There  is  a  mass  of  literature  on  the  processes  of 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER    253 

almost  every  trade,  rich  in  inspiration  and  informa- 
tion if  the  library  will  only  gather  it  and  make  it 
accessible." 

The  weakness  of  the  library,  as  pointed  out  by 
the  report,  consists  in  its  failure  to  provide  literature 
of  vocational  worth.  This  is  due  partly  to  the 
want  of  demand  for  information,  but  largely 
to  the  lack  of  qualification  on  the  part  of  the 
librarian.  Librarians  to  a  large  degree  are  mere 
lovers  of  books.  Such  qualifications  as  they  have 
are  in  the  realm  of  literature,  history  and  art.  They 
have  little  technical  or  industrial  knowledge  and  less 
sympathy  with  the  industrial  world.  Few  helps 
have  been  accorded  them  by  guiding  agencies. 
Library  associations  and  state  commissions  give 
ample  guidance  for  book  selection  in  boys'  and  girls' 
stories,  modern  novels  and  in  literature,  art,  history 
or  social  science,  but  provide  slight  guidance  in  the 
selection  of  books  suitable  for  vocational  workers. 

From  lack  of  knowledge  and  guidance  the  selec- 
tion of  books  for  trade  workers,  if  made  at  all,  is 
very  generally  unsuited  to  their  needs.  Thus  one 
library  announced  that  thereafter  it  would  supply 
the  workmen's  needs.  Then  it  proceeded  to  lodge 
upon  the  shelves  ponderously  technical  books  on 
mechanics  and  engineering  which  none  but  a  pro- 
fessional engineer  could  read  understandingly,  much 
less  use.  The  sponsors  for  the  movement  professed 
to  be  surprised  that  workmen  did  not  flock  to  the 


254  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

library,  the  scheme  was  abandoned  and  the  library 
settled  back  to  its  former  silent  composure,  and 
righteous  contentment  reigned  again. 

There  is  a  mass  of  literature  on  the  processes  and 
history  of  almost  every  trade,  rich  in  inspiration  and 
information  if  the  library  will  only  gather  it  and 
make  it  accessible.  Material  useful  to  industrial 
workers,  such  as  books  and  pamphlets  descriptive  of 
industrial  processes,  biographies  of  men  who  have 
made  history  in  the  industrial  world,  trade  publica- 
tions, labor  union  organs,  technical  journals, 
catalogs  of  industries,  material  on  political  and  eco- 
nomic questions  of  public  concern  should  be  gath- 
ered. The  problem  first  to  determine  is  what  kind 
of  material  is  needed  for  information  and  inspira- 
tion to  the  possible  patrons  of  the  industrialized 
library.  The  material,  of  course,  should  be  adapted 
to  the  particular  locality.  The  literature  of  local 
trades  and  industries  should  predominate.  If  men 
are  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  furniture,  their 
trade  interests  will  be  centered  in  furniture  and  their 
trade  questions  will  relate  to  furniture.  Trade 
workers  in  jewelry  will  need  for  their  use  literature 
relating  to  jewelry.  Thus,  the  Grand  Rapids  library 
specializes  in  furniture,  while  the  library  of  Provi- 
dence makes  a  specialty  of  books  and  magazines  on 
jewelry. 

Comparatively  little  is  being  done  in  the  cities  of 
this  country  to  vocationalize  the  library.    The  expe- 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER    255 

rience  of  a  few  cities,  however,  gives  proof  of  its  ef- 
ficiency. The  useful  arts  departments  and  branches 
of  Cincinnati,  Chicago  and  Pittsburg  are  a  con- 
stant source  of  help  to  the  workers.  Their  quar- 
ters are  crowded,  not  with  pleasure-  or  curiosity- 
seekers,  but  with  interested  men  who  seek  to  learn 
more  scientific  facts  about  the  trade  in  which  they 
work  or  who  come  to  solve  some  specific  problem. 
From  the  industrial  departments  of  public  libraries 
there  is  given  to  every  man  a  constant  invitation  to 
find  a  way  "out  and  up"  by  a  broader  acquaintance 
with  the  science  upon  which  his  trade  is  founded. 

The  newest  form  of  service  and  the  most  effective 
is  the  establishment  of  industrial  branches  of  the 
public  library  in  factories,  stores  and  other  estab- 
lishments. By  this  method  workers  in  particular 
occupations  are  more  readily  reached.  The  prime 
purpose  of  these  branches  is  to  furnish  the  facilities 
for  vocational  knowledge  close  to  the  potential  de- 
mand. The  trade  worker  may  never  find  the  way 
to  the  reading  rooms  of  the  public  library,  and  if  he 
does  he  may  be  bewildered  with  the  mass  of  books, 
but  he  can  not  fail  to  find  and  utilize  any  well- 
selected  trade  literature  placed  where  he  must  pass 
it  daily.  His  use  of  the  material  may  be  little  or 
much,  but  it  is  better  than  none  at  all.  Some  men 
-  are  bound  to  establish  the  information-getting  habit. 
Their  efficiency  is  bound  to  be  increased  and  their 
.example  would  have  its  influence. 


256  LEARNING   TO    EARN 


I  Vi 


In  the  industrial  branches  of  Chicago's  public 
ibrary  there  were  circulated  in  the  year  ending  in 
May,  1914,  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight  thousand 
one  hundred  and  ninety-two  volumes.  A  very  un- 
usual proportion  of  these  books  represented  serious 
effort  at  education  or  practical  use  on  the  part  of  the 
readers.  Several  of  the  concerns  where  these 
branches  are  located  in  Chicago  employ  their  own 
librarian,  who  is  in  the  largest  sense  a  vocational 
specialist.  These  librarians  study  the  fields  of  work 
in  which  the  employees  are  engaged  and  try  to  make 
the  books  selected  function  with  the  job.  They 
engage  in  special  reference  work  for  the  heads  of 
departments  and  the  executives  and  bring  from  the 
world  of  print  collected  in  the  city's  many  libraries 
the  material  which  will  serve  business  purposes. 
Such  a  librarian  is  thus  a  connecting  link  between 
the  man  or  woman  on  the  job  and  the  source  of 
useful  information. 

The  practical  character  of  the  work  is  reflected  in 
the  list  of  books  borrowed  from  the  public  library 
for  the  use  of  employees.  At  the  Marshall  Field 
branch,  which  is  conducted  in  cooperation  with  the 
store,  the  emphasis  is  laid  upon  material  which  sup- 
plies the  needs  of  mercantile  workers.  Employees  in 
this  store  borrowed  during  one  month  four  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  eighty  books,  and  among 
these  books  are  such  books  of  vocational  worth  as 
The  Story  of  Textiles,  The  Sheraton  Period,  Deco- 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER    257 

rative  Styles  and  Periods,  Advertising  as  a  Busi- 
ness, Furniture  of  Our  Forefathers,  Electricity  Sim- 
plified, Keramic  Studies,  Precious  Stones,  Book- 
keeping for  Retailers,  Magic  of  Dress,  Porcelain, 
The  Expert  Waitress,  Home  Furnishings,  Garden 
Planning,  How  to  Live  on  Twenty-four  Hours  a 
Day  and  many  others  relating  to  the  work  of  the 
retail  store. 

In  all  of  the  work  of  the  industrial  and  commer- 
cial deposit  stations  in  Chicago  the  concern  where 
the  branch  is  located  supplies  quarters  and  equip- 
ment. The  public  library  supplies  the  books  and  pro- 
vides research  work  on  questions  of  business  in- 
formation or  kindred  topics. 

No  doubt  much  of  the  effort  of  the  library  to 
awaken  serious  study  will  be  fruitless.  Laziness, 
indifference  and  dense  ignorance  can  not  be  readily 
overcome,  but  here  and  there  the  library  will  sow 
seed  which  will  eventually  grow  into  a  harvest. 
There  are  infinite  possibilities  for  a  public  library  to 
be  a  working  factor  in  serving  the  men  in  the  ranks 
who  do  things  as  well  as  the  men  who  think  things. 

The  most  effective  kind  of  education  is  that  which 
clenches  theory  with  practise,  making  knowledge  as 
such  a  living  thing  in  the  work  of  the  day.  The 
tradesman  can  learn  more  mathematics  of  his  trade 
when  he  learns  it  in  connection  with  his  daily  work 
than  he  can  in  weeks  of  unrelated  theoretical  study. 
Likewise  the  banker,  clerk,  salesman,  bookkeeper, 


258  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

lawyer  or  other  business  man  can  learn  the  broader 
aspects  of  his  business  when  the  theory  is  learned  in 
connection  with  daily  practise.  Most  men  have  not 
had  the  opportunity  to  take  formal  courses  of  study 
while  working,  and  to  many  the  only  opportunity 
that  can  come  will  be  through  the  service  of  the  pub- 
lic library. 

This  service  should  not  be  limited  merely  to  the 
industrial  workers.  All  vocations  are  in  need  of 
correlated  study  and  all  can  profit  concretely 
through  the  agency  of  the  library.  The  library  is 
the  focus  of  information.  Its  dragnet  is  out  in  all 
parts  to  gather  practical  knowledge  for  the  use  of 
artisans,  lawyers,  manufacturers,  professors,  doc- 
tors, business  men,  home-makers,  in  fact,  every  one 
with  a  mind  capable  of  growth. 

Efficiency  requires  knowledge  and  there  is  no 
royal  road  to  knowledge.  "No  man  has  ever  known 
too  much  about  anything,  and  the  only  safe  way  is 
to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  minutest  problems  of  the 
day  all  the  concrete  knowledge  of  the  world.  There 
are  two  sources  of  knowledge — men  and  books — 
and  efficiency  is  linking  up  the  two.  Books  alone 
without  capable  and  expert  interpretation  are  likely 
to  lead  one  astray  because  words  and  sentences  have 
no  fixity  of  value."1  But,  continues  the  same 
author,  "There  never  was  a  time  when  business  men 
were  writing  more  about  business  and  giving  out  of 


1  St  Elmo  Lewis  in  Special  Libraries,  May,  1913. 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER     259 

their  experience  a  more  competent  interpretation  of 
the  real  lessons  of  that  experience  than  they  are  to- 
day." 

The  same  may  be  said  not  only  of  business,  but  of 
every  vocation  and  of  every  walk  of  life.  Men  are 
depending  more  upon  the  lessons  of  experience 
gained  from  print,  and  the  corresponding  duty  and 
opportunity  of  the  library  is  very  great. 

The  opportunity  of  the  library  which  serves  a 
rural  community  is  no  less  important.  The  diffi- 
culties here  are  enhanced  by  the  isolation  of  the 
workers,  but  on  the  other  hand  much  of  the  material 
of  great  practical  value  is  available  free  of  cost.  If 
such  a  library  did  nothing  more  than  acquaint  its 
patrons  with  valuable  studies  of  farm  matters  issued 
by  the  Department  of  Agriculture  at  Washington, 
the  state  experiment  stations  and  agricultural  col- 
leges, it  would  perform  one  of  the  needed  services 
of  the  time. 

Vast  stores  of  agricultural  information  of  direct 
value  to  farmers  are  in  print,  but  not  in  use.  It  needs 
the  focusing  process  of  a  library  and  trained  library 
workers  to  bring  it  to  its  proper  application  on  the 
soil.  The  legislature  of  Texas  had  this  in  mind 
when  in  1913  it  provided  for  county  libraries  of 
agriculture  wherever  the  people  should  so  vote,  the 
function  of  which  would  be  to  gather  and  be  ready 
to  furnish  agricultural  information  to  the  farmers. 
The  controlling  features  of  these  libraries,  if  rightly 


260  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

established,  would  be  to  serve  as  a  clearing  house  of 
information  on  practical  subjects.  The  farmer 
wants  to  know  how  to  fight  an  insect  pest,  or  to 
prevent  diseases  of  live  stock,  or  to  raise  a  particular 
crop  and  to  safeguard  it  against  disease;  he  wants 
to  know  about  transportation  arid  markets,  legisla- 
tion and  public  matters  affecting  his  interests,  and 
he  is  concerned  about  schools,  roads  and  drainage. 
He  can  use  a  bureau  of  such  information  in  practical 
fashion  and  the  library  should  be  in  a  position  to 
supply  it  when  he  wants  it.  The  newly-created 
county  agents  of  agriculture  in  many  states  are  the 
logical  disseminators  of  such  information,  but  they 
can  not  do  it  without  a  library  to  back  them  up. 

The  library  as  a  vocational  counselor  and  guide 
may  be  made  of  tremendous  social  power.     Noth- 

\ing  so  much  needs  to  be  provided  as  the  enlightened 
guidance  of  youth  when  they  are  choosing  a  career. 
The  work  of  a  lifetime  often  depends  upon  mere 
accident.  Vocations  are  chosen  without  proper  un- 
derstanding or  knowledge.  The  schools  are  awak- 
ening, however,  to  their  obligation  in  this  respect, 
and  this  awakening  means  that  the  library  must  sup- 
ply printed  information  covering  the  opportunities 
and  obligations  in  the  hundreds  of  vocations  into 
which  the  young  people  go.  The  library  must  fur- 
nish the  guidance  for  the  vocational  counselor  in 
order  that  the  broadest  counsels  shall  prevail. 

The  world's  literature  is  full  of  descriptive  mate- 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  WORKER    261 

rial  of  professions,  trades  and  callings.  Recent 
literature  teems  with  discussions  of  the  work  of 
different  vocations,  the  wages  possible  in  them,  the 
outlook  for  advancement  and  the  prospect  as  a  life 
career.  In  cooperation  with  the  schools  this  should 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  acute  problem  of  youth 
— that  of  the  choice  of  a  life's  work. 

To  summarize,  then,  the  library  is  the  principal 
source  of  instruction  to  practically  all  the  adult 
workers.  Practical  literature  to  supply  the  needs  I 
of  workers  is  in  print  and  should  be  available  to  the 
workers,  and  the  workers  should  be  encouraged  to 
see  its  advantages.  Books  should  be  adapted  to  the 
workers  and  function  with  the  job  in  fteld,  factory 
and  office.  Lastly,  the  library  owes  a  social  duty  as 
a  vocational  guide  and  counselor. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

VOCATIONAL  GUIDANCE 

Occupational  divisions — Educational  effort  is  centered  on  the 
few — Jefferson  as  a  vocational  counselor — New  conditions  de- 
mand highly  specialized  training — Doctor  Parsons'  precepts 
in  the  selection  of  a  vocation — Psychological  aspects  of  voca- 
tional selection — Vocational  guidance  and  conservation — Fu- 
tility of  "compulsory  education" — Purpose  of  vocational  guid- 
ance^— Economic  loss  from  lack  of  trained  workers — A  wise 
choice  of  vocations  is  essential  in  a  democracy — Protection  of 
the  child  involves  intimate  acquaintance  with  conditions  sur- 
rounding work — Aids  to  an  industrial  survey — Summary. 

There  are  about  one  hundred  and  fifteen  thou- 
sand lawyers  in  the  United  States,  according  to  the 
1910  census,  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
physicians  and  surgeons,  approximately  one  hun- 
dred and  eighteen  thousand  clergymen  and  some- 
thing near  sixty  thousand  civil,  mechanical,  electrical 
and  mining  engineers.  Then  there  are  about  five 
hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  school-teachers, 
and  the  group  of  artists,  sculptors,  musicians,  nurses 
and  miscellaneous  professional  people,  which,  alto- 
gether, number  about  one  and  three-quarter  million 
engaged  in  professional  pursuits. 

It  is  this  million  and  three-quarters  people  who, 
under  our  present  educational  system,  are  receiving 
largely  from  the  state  and  at  public  expense  a  voca- 

262 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  263 

tional  education.  They  constitute  less  than  five  per 
cent,  of  the  population  over  ten  years  of  age  engaged 
in  gainful  occupations.  Moreover,  they  make  up  the 
bulk  of  that  fraction  of  the  population  which  re^ 
ceives,  from  the  public  school  system,  any  consider- 
able training  for  the  occupation  followed  in  after 
life.  The  training  of  school-teachers,  except  for 
those  trained  in  normal  schools  and  colleges,  is  not 
strictly  vocational.  Nor  do  all  the  lawyers  receive 
their  professional  training  in  schools  maintained  by 
the  state.  Ministers  are  not  educated  vocationally 
at  public  expense.  An  accurate  estimate  would  re- 
duce considerably  below  five  per  cent,  the  working 
population  trained  for  their  vocations  wholly  or 
partially  by  the  public  school  system. 

There  are  nearly  thirteen  million  farmers  who 
receive  little  if  any  specific  education  for  agriculture. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  ten  million  persons  engaged 
in  manufacturing  and  mechanical  pursuits;  of  three 
and  one-half  million  engaged  in  trade  and  two  and 
one-half  million  engaged  in  transportation.  Our 
educational  system,  as  far  as  it  is  possessed  of  voca- 
tional aspects  at  all,  is  maintained  for  the  training 
of  less  than  five  per  cent,  of  the  population,  prob- 
ably not  more  than  three  per  cent.  Farmers,  indus- 
trial workers,  commercial  and  transportation  work- 
ers— constituting  at  least  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the 
population — derive  little  if  any  vocational  benefit 
from  public  education.    We  are  educating  for  their 


264  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

life-calling  a  few  lawyers,  a  few  physicians,  a  part 
of  our  school-teachers  and  engineers,  training  them 
for  professions  already  overcrowded  and  in  which 
the  chances  of  success  diminish  as  young  men  are 
attracted  to  them  for  want  of  anything  else  for 
which  the  public  school  system  offers  equal  prepara- 
tion. 

We  are  doing  all  this  and  permitting  ninety-five 
per  cent,  to  drift  aimlessly,  possessed  of  scant  train- 
ing and  capable  only  of  the  lowest  efficiency. 

Under  our  present  system  boys  and  girls,  if  they 
are  to  choose  a  vocation  for  which  education  in  the 
public  schools  is  of  definite  value,  must  select  one 
from  the  narrow  and  overcrowded  field  of  the  so- 
called  cultural  pursuits — law,  medicine,  engineering 
or  pedagogy.  The  proponents  of  vocational  educa- 
tion propose  to  broaden  the  curriculum  so  that 
young  men  who  want  to  be  farmers,  mechanics, 
business  managers  or  directors  will  find  equal  in- 
ducements for  training  in  the  curriculum.  When 
the  curriculum  has  been  thus  broadened,  there  will 
be  possible  a  real  choice  of  a  vocation. 

As  a  complement  of  the  proposed  system  of  voca- 
tional education  a  system  of  vocational  guidance  is 
advanced  as  a  means  to  avert  the  chaotic  distribu- 
tion of  the  workers,  the  overcrowding  of  a  few 
vocations  and  the  social  unrest  occasioned  by  the 
inefficiency  or  enforced  idleness  of  a  great  section 
of  the  population. 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  265 

"The  greatest  evils  of  a  populous  society,"  said 
Jefferson,1  "have  ever  appeared  to  me  to  spring  from 
the  vicious  distribution  of  its  members  among  the 
occupations  called  for.  I  have  no  doubt  that  those 
nations  are  essentially  right  which  leave  this  to 
individual  choice,  as  a  better  guide  to  an  advanta- 
geous distribution  than  any  other  which  could  be  de- 
vised. But  when,  by  a  blind  concourse,  particular 
occupations  are  ruinously  overcharged,  and  others 
left  in  want  of  hands,  the  national  authorities  can  do 
much  toward  restoring  the  equilibrium." 

Jefferson  considered  a  "comfortable  subsistence"2 
as  the  first  and  most  important  end  of  a  vocation. 
The  movement  for  vocational  guidance  is  founded, 
in  part,  upon  the  notion,  which  is  gaining  validity, 
that  every  man  has  a  particular  bent  to  a  vocation 
which,  if  discovered  and  cultivated  in  a  careful  and 
painstaking  process  of  education  and  training,  will 
insure  not  only  a  "comfortable,"  but  a  happy  sub- 
sistence as  well. 

"It  is  very  certain  that  no  man  is  fit  for  every- 
thing," said  Lord  Chesterfield  to  his  son.  "But  it  is 
almost  as  certain,  too,  that  there  is  scarce  any  one 
who  is  not  fit  for  something,  which  something 
nature  plainly  points  out  to  him  by  giving  him  a 
tendency  and  propensity  to  it. 

"Every  man  finds  in  himself,  either  from  nature 

1  Letter  to  David  Williams,  Washington  edition,  IV,  p.  512 ; 
written  from  Washington  in  1803. 

3  Thoughts  on  Lotteries,  Washington  edition,  IX,  p.  505; 
written  from  Monticello,  1826. 


266  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

or  education — for  they  are  hard  to  distinguish — a 
peculiar  bent  and  disposition  to  some  particular 
character,  and  his  struggling  against  it  is  the  fruit- 
less and  endless  labor  of  Sisyphus.  Let  him  follow 
and  cultivate  that  vocation ;  he  will  succeed  in  it  and 
be  considerable  in  one  way  at  least;  whereas  if  he 
departs  from  it  he  will  at  best  be  inconsiderable, 
probably  ridiculous. " 

Vocational  guidance  is  a  bit  of  new  phraseology 
for  a  human  institution  that  is  very  old.  Pythag- 
oras sought  to  lead  his  disciples  into  ways  of  the 
"perfect  life,''  an  ideal  based  upon  theological  and 
metaphysical  concepts  of  a  world,  every  attribute  of 
which  yielded  to  mathematical  formulae.  Xeno- 
phon's  teachings  were  meant  to  lead  to  a  realization 
of  the  same  ideal.  Aristotle  invented  a  state,  the 
ideal  of  which  was  a  citizenship  based  upon  virtue. 
He  described  a  complete  system  of  education  which 
he  expected  would  produce  a  virtuous  citizen. 
Farmers  and  mechanics  were  to  be  excluded  from 
citizenship.  In  fact,  Aristotle,  while  favoring  in- 
struction in  "useful  subjects,"  thought  "only  those 
useful  subjects  ought  to  be  taught  which  do  not  turn 
those  learning  them  into  craftsmen." 

It  is  a  far  call  from  the  kind  of  vocational  educa- 
tion proposed  by  Aristotle  and  the  kind  we  are  to- 
day proposing.  In  fact,  we  want  a  kind  of  voca- 
tional education  that  will  turn  a  part  of  our  people 
into  craftsmen,  only  we  want  it  to  turn  them  into 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  267 

efficient  craftsmen.  We  are  quite  willing  to  take 
chances  in  the  matter  of  producing  a  virtuous  citi- 
zen if  we  can  first  make  of  the  man  a  self-support- 
ing, efficient  workman.  Our  present  notion  is  that 
the  man  must  be  an  efficient  workman  before  he  can 
be  a  good  citizen — an  ideal  quite  as  worthy  as  that 
of  the  virtuous  citizen. 

Present  ideals  in  education  do  not  at  all  square 
with  the  notions  of  Aristotle  when  he  says : 

"We  ought  to  look  upon  every  employment,  art  or 
study  which  contributes  to  render  the  bodies,  souls 
or  intellects  of  free  men  unfit  for  the  uses  and  prac- 
tises of  virtue,  as  a  craft.  For  this  reason  it  is  that 
we  call  all  those  arts  which  lower  the  condition  of 
the  body  crafts,  and  extend  the  terms  to  the  money- 
making  trades,  because  they  preoccupy  and  degrade 
the  intelligence." 

Aristotle  does  not  seem  to  have  been  wholly  ad- 
verse to  education  for  business,  although  he  believed 
that  business  was  only  a  means  to  leisure.  "If  we 
must  have  both"  (education  for  business  and  educa- 
tion for  leisure),  said  Aristotle,  "we  must;  but 
leisure  is  preferable  to  business,  and  our  final  in- 
quiry must  be  in  what  sort  of  employment  we  shall 
spend  our  leisure."  However  incongruous  this 
notion  of  the  vocations  seems  to  be,  it  falls  within 
the  category  of  vocational  guidance  and  it  will  have 
to  be  conceded  that  Aristotle,  in  his  own  way,  was  a 
vocational  counselor. 


268  LEARNING  TO   EARN 

Nicholas  Murray  Butler  has  well  expressed  the 
basic  conditions  in  society  for  which  the  whole  pro- 
gram of  vocational  education  is  drawn  up.  He  goes 
straight  to  the  heart  of  this  movement  and  presents 
the  case  as  a  comparatively  recent  development  in 
our  civilization,  a  program  that  has  grown  out  of 
changed  industrial  and  social  conditions.  In  this 
he  is  quite  correct. 

"At  one  time,"  he  says,3  "when  life  was  simpler, 
when  the  home  counted  for  more,  when  there  was  a 
great  deal  of  very  admirable  training  of  a  manual 
and  industrial  kind  to  be  had  from  the  ordinary  arts 
of  the  home,  of  the  farm  and  of  the  shop,  much  that 
was  practically  helpful  was  done  for  the  boy.  This 
was,  let  us  say,  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago.  But 
under  our  modern  conditions  of  huge  city  communi- 
ties, of  congested  population  and  the  highly  special- 
ized character  of  all  industrial  work,  unless  one 
knows  some  particular  thing,  he  knows  nothing. 
The  situation  which  confronts  the  boy  or  the  girl  of 
fourteen  who  leaves  the  elementary  school  and  is 
forced  to  begin  to  take  hold  of  life  somewhere  and 
somehow,  to  help  to  provide  for  the  family  liveli- 
hood and  sustenance,  is  difficult  and  sad  in  the 
extreme." 

The  present  chaotic  distribution  of  workers  gave 
considerable  impetus  to  the  movement  for  a  scien- 
tific scheme  of  vocational  guidance.     When  it  was 


•Address  before  the  Commercial  Club  of  Chicago,  Dec  14, 
1912. 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  269 

seen  that  young  men  who  had  left  the  public  schools 
were  unable  to  find  any  remunerative  work  they 
might  do,  any  means  of  earning  a  substantial  liveli- 
hood, occasional  effort  was  put  forth  to  seek  out 
places  into  which  they  might  fit.  Vocational  guid- 
ance in  this  stage  was  possessed  of  little  more  scien- 
tific approach  than  mere  employment  bureaus.  A 
few  young  men,  however,  profited  by  this  elemen- 
tary form  of  vocational  guidance.  A  few  were 
enabled  to  find  employment,  who,  otherwise,  might 
have  drifted  from  one  inconsequential  job  to  an- 
other. 

Vocational  guidance  means  far  more  than  em-  i 
ployment  agencies  for  young  men.  It  means,  first, 
a  complete  survey  of  industry — of  all  vocations — to 
determine  for  what  occupations  the  specific  training 
of  young  men  is  warranted.  It  means,  secondly,  a 
thorough  examination  of  the  tendencies  and  inclina- 
tions of  each  individual  to  determine  for  what  occu- 
pation he  is  best  fitted. 

The  late  Doctor  Frank  Parsons,  who  was  director 
of  the  Vocation  Bureau  and  Breadwinners'  Institute 
of  Boston,  made  the  first  modern  experiments  lead- 
ing to  the  present  movement  for  vocational  guidance. 
Parsons  laid  down4  three  broad  factors  in  the  choice 
of  a  vocation:  (1)  A  clear  understanding  of  your- 
self, your  aptitudes,  abilities,  interests,  ambitions, 


4  Choosing  a  Vocation,  p.  5. 


270  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

resources,  limitations  and  their  causes;  (2)  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  requirements  and  conditions  of  success, 
advantages  and  disadvantages,  compensation,  oppor- 
tunities and  prospects  in  different  lines  of  work; 
(3)  the  true  reasoning  on  the  relations  of  these  two 
groups  of  facts. 

Parsons  sought  to  collect  all  personal  data  obtain- 
able; a  self -analysis  made  up  of  answers  to  an  im- 
posing list  of  questionnaires,  the  individual's  own 
choice  of  a  vocation -and  an  independent  analysis  by 
the  vocational  counselor  of  heredity,  temperament, 
natural  equipment,  face  and  character,  educational 
experience  and  dominant  interests. 

There  was  to  be  a  classification  of  vocations  and 
industries,  showing  the  conditions  of  success  in  each, 
the  apprenticeship  systems  in  use,  vocational  schools 
accessible  and  employment  agencies  and  opportu- 
nities. 

The  third  step  in  the  work  of  the  vocational  coun- 
selor was  to  determine  the  exact  relationship  be- 
tween the  first  group  of  facts  and  the  second. 
Always  there  was  a  doubt  as  to  whether  all  the  facts 
in  the  first  group  had  been  gathered  and  therefore 
whether  the  conclusions  of  the  vocational  counselor 
were  correct.  Doctor  Parsons*  methods  were  too 
much  reliant  upon  empirical  processes,  too  much  de- 
pendent upon  the  impressionistic  to  be  exact,  and  it 
was  at  this  point  that  appeal  was  made  to  experi- 
mental psychology. 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  271 

"The  problem,"  says  Hugo  Miinsterberg,5  "ac- 
cordingly has  been  handed  over  from  the  vocational 
counselors  to  the  experimental  psychologists,  and  it 
is  certainly  in  the  spirit  of  the  modern  tendency 
toward  applied  psychology  that  the  psychological 
laboratories  undertake  the  investigation  and  with- 
draw it  from  the  dilettantic  discussion  of  amateur 
psychologists  or  the  mere  impressionism  of  the 
school-teachers.  Even  those  early  beginnings  indi- 
cate clearly  that  the  goal  can  be  reached  only 
through  exact,  scientific,  experimental  research,  and 
that  the  mere  naive  methods — for  instance,  the  fill- 
ing out  of  questionnaires  which  may  be  quite  useful 
in  the  first  approach — can  not  be  sufficient  for  a 
real,  persistent  furtherance  of  economic  life  and  of 
the  masses  who  seek  their  vocations." 

What  Miinsterberg  says  is  all  very  true,  except 
that  there  is  no  reason  to  wait  until  experimental 
psychologists  have  done  their  work  before  we  under- 
take to  use  what  facts  we  may  gather  by  more  or 
less  empirical  methods.  Also,  all  the  facts  in  the 
second  group  may  be  gathered  now.  In  fact,  many 
industries  already  have  been  surveyed  by  the  voca- 
tional counselor  or  for  his  use.  No  exhaustive 
study  of  the  psychological  processes  of  industry  has 
yet  been  made,  but  there  is  no  doubt  this  will  be 
found  to  be  quite  as  important  as  a  study  of  the 
psychological  processes  of  the  individual  mind. 
Miinsterberg    himself    says:6    "We    must,    indeed, 

5  Psychology  and  Industrial  Efficiency,  p.  43. 

6  Ibid.,  p.  57. 


272  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

insist  on  it  that  the  interests  of  commerce  and  in- 
dustry can  be  helped  only  when  both  sides,  the 
vocational  demands  and  the  personal  function,  are 
examined  with  equal  scientific  thoroughness." 

Miinsterberg  has  conducted  certain  experiments 
to  determine  the  fitness  psychologically  of  the  indi- 
vidual for  electric  railway,  ship  and  telephone  serv- 
ice. The  importance  of  a  proper  selection  of  electric 
railway  motormen  is  seen  in  an  annual  expenditure 
of  thirteen  per  cent,  of  the  gross  receipts  of  some 
roads  for  damages  due  to  avoidable  accidents.  His 
experiments  resulted  in  the  rejection  of  one- fourth 
of  the  applicants  for  positions  as  motormen.  Reac- 
tion time  tests  have  been  used  in  selecting  girls  for 
the  inspection  of  balls  used  in  ball  bearings.  In  one 
instance  thirty-five  girls  were  obtained  by  careful 
examination  psychologically  who  were  able  to  do 
the  work  formerly  done  by  one  hundred  and  twenty 
girls.  In  the  same  case  accuracy  was  increased 
sixty-six  per  cent.,  the  working  day  was  decreased 
from  ten  and  one-half  to  eight  and  one-half  hours 
and  the  profits  of  the  factory  increased.  Experi- 
ments are  now  being  made  to  test  the  fitness  of 
stenographers  and  typists,  and  preliminary  work  has 
been  done  for  the  psychological  testing  of  chauf- 
feurs, singers  and  marine  officers.  Recruits  for  the 
army,  navy  and  marine  corps  and  railroad  employees 
have  been  subjected  to  examinations,  closely  approx- 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  273 

imating  the   methods   proposed    for   psychological 
tests  of  vocational  fitness  for  many  years. 

There  are  nearly  ten  thousand  separate  and  dis- 
tinct occupations  listed  in  the  United  States  census 
reports,  so  that  the  work  necessary  to  be  done  to 
determine  what  occupations  warrant  public  school 
training  and  to  establish  tests  for  educational  fitness 
seems  monumental.  As  Ayres  says  :7  "It  is  true  that  /,/  2 
only  a  part  of  the  nine  thousand  three  hundred  and  )  " 
twenty-six  gainful  occupations  are  available  to  the 
children  of  any  one  locality.  It  is  also  true  that  the 
same  sort  of  tests  would  undoubtedly  serve  for 
many  different  occupational  examinations."  The 
same  writer  cautions  against  another  fallacy. 

"We  must  remember,"  he  says,8  "that  we  are  using 
a  false  analogy  when  we  refer  to  fitting  square  pegs 
into  round  holes  in  talking  of  vocational  misfits,  for 
people  and  positions  are  both  plastic,  not  rigid,  ancj  K 
much  mutual  change  of  form  often  takes  place 
without  injury  to  either  person  or  position." 

Vocational  guidance  is  closely  related  in  its  incep- 
tion to  another  movement — conservation  of  our  re- 
sources. It  seems  a  bit  strange,  perhaps,  that  a 
strictly  materialistic  impulse  has  furnished  any  im- 
petus for  the  program  of  conserving  the  energies 

7  Leonard  P.  Ayres,  director  of  Division  of  Education,  Rus- 
sell Sage  Foundation:  Psychological  Tests  in  Vocational 
Guidance,  paper  read  before  organization  meeting  of  Voca- 
tional Guidance  Association,  Grand  Rapids,  1913. 

8  Ibid. 


274  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

and  talents  of  human  workers,  of  directing  them 
into  the  channels  where  they  are  best  suited  to  go. 
Yet  such  is  the  case.  Most  humanizing  movements, 
moreover,  owe  either  their*  origin  or  their  progress, 
or  both,  to  materialistic  impulses,  to  commercial 
motives. 

We  can  scarcely  wonder  that  the  proposed  scheme 
of  scientific  vocational  guidance  has  found  a  ready 
response  among  all  people,  after  we  have  marked 
the  unwise  choice  of  a  vocation  by  numberless 
young  men  and  women,  temporarily  infatuated  with 
the  traditions  of  a  calling  for  which  they  were  not 
at  all  adapted;  the  failure  of  the  boy  and  girl,  just 
out  of  the  public  schools,  to  find  any  lucrative  voca- 
tion into  which  they  will  fit;  the  economic  need  of 
industry  for  employees  who  will  fit  efficiently  into  ) 
skilled  work,  and  finally  the  limitless  waste  of  ability 
from  all  these  causes,  due  to  untrained,  undiscovered 
or  misapplied  energy. 

Orthodox  school  men  were  among  the  first  to  dis- 
cover the  failure  of  the  public  school  to  hold  the 
interest  of  the  boy  and  girl  until  sufficiently  mature 
to  choose  wisely  a  vocation.  Accurate  data  show 
that  not  more  than  one  in  every  ten  who  enter  the 
elementary  grades  remain  until  the  last  year  of  the 
high-school  course.  Half  the  children  drop  out  of 
school  before  finishing  the  eighth  grade.  The  re- 
sponse to  this  discovery,  feeble  though  it  was,  was 
a  concession  that  a  classical  or  so-called  cultural 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  275 

education  does  not  meet  the  needs  and  dominant 
interest  of  nine  out  of  ten  boys  and  girls  who  leave 
before  completing  the  high-school  course  of  study. 

Compulsory  education  came  into  vogue  partly  as 
a  vain  attempt  to  stem  the  tide  of  "withdrawals" 
from  the  schools.  Severe  regulations  of  child  labor 
operated  as  a  further  check.  Yet  the  futility  of 
these  makeshifts  is  apparent.  Authorities  may  lead 
the  boy  and  girl  to  the  trough  of  an  impracticable, 
uninteresting  and  obsolete  curriculum,  but  even  they 
can  not  make  the  boy  and  girl  drink.  Boys  and  girls 
want  the  water  of  life,  but  they  want  it  fresh  from 
a  fountain  that  flows  freely  with  the  spirit  of  their 
own  times. 

The  fact  remains,  therefore,  that  not  one-third  of 
the  population  proceeds  far  enough  in  our  educa- 
tional system  to  be  able  to  see,  much  less  understand, 
the  diversity  of  educational  opportunity  open  to 
them. 

Some  expect  individual  ambition  to  overcome  the 
economic  obstacles  in  a  complex  society,  where  a 
few  boys  are  born  very  rich  and  a  great  multitude 
are  born  very  poor,  and  where  a  very  few  emerge  tri- 

iphantly  in  possession  of  the  means  to  comfort 
and  refined  pleasure.  The  wide-spread  distress,  the 
"present  class  distinctions  which  already  cleave  soci- 
cy  and  wreck  so  many  lives,',  the  lack  of  wise  lead- 
ership in  an  ever-spreading  industrial  crisis,  are 
effective  rejoinders  to  this  sort  of  argument.  Ambi- 


276  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

tion  is  circumscribed  by  the  vocational  vision  of  the 
young  man  and  young  woman  and  vocational  vision 
is  limited  by  the  territorial  boundaries  of  a  commu- 
nity all  too  small  for  the  native  talents  of  the  individ- 
ual. There  are  hundreds  of  lucrative  and  pleasant 
occupations,  one  of  which  a  young  man  might  be  able 
to  fill  with  rare  personal  pleasure  and  satisfactory 
profit,  about  which  he  may  never  hear  at  all,  or  if 
he  does,  not  until  it  is  too  late  in  life  to  undertake 
that  work. 

"That  handicap  imposed  by  leaving  school,"  said 
a  writer  in  the  American  Journal  of  Sociology, 
"consists  not  merely  of  being  deprived  of  a  vantage- 
ground  from  which  an  appropriate  vocational  choice 
may  be  made,  but  also  in  the  fact  that  such  youth 
are  almost  certain  to  drift  into  inconsequential  and 
totally  uneducative  tasks  such  as  our  society  reserves 
as  a  heritage  for  the  working  boy." 

It  is  the  "inconsequential  and  totally  uneducated 
tasks"  which  Nicholas  Murray  Butler  calls  "uneco- 
nomic employment"  and  which  he  traces  to  a  lack 
of  adaptation  to  remunerative  and  efficient  labor. 

"Uneconomic  employment,"  he  says,9  "is  almost  as 
great  an  evil  in  its  way  as  unemployment.  It  is  not 
so  serious,  doubtless,  for  the  individual  who  is  em- 
ployed, even  though  waste  fully  and  uneconomically'; 
but  it  is  almost  as  bad  as  unemployment  for  the 

9  Address  before  the  Commercial  Club  of  Chicago,  Dec.  14, 
1912. 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  277 

public  as  a  whole,  which  in  the  one  case  will  get  no 
service  at  all  from  the  individual  who  can  not  find  a 
way  to  earn  an  economic  reward,  and  in  the  other 
case  is  getting  only  a  partial  service  for  whatever 
economic  reward  is  paid." 

It  is  the  purpose  of  scientific  vocational  guidance 
to  find  the  one  occupation  the  individual  boy  may 
perform  with  credit,  even  though  it  be  beyond  the 
horizon  of  the  young  man's  vocational  vision  at  the 
time  when  he  must  go  to  work. 

Indiana  has  a  new  law  which  requires  working 
certificates  for  children  between  fourteen  and  sixteen 
years  of  age  for  each  position  in  which  they  are 
engaged.  The  report  of  the  Indianapolis  Depart- 
ment of  Attendance  for  1913-14  shows  very  clearly 
how  far  untrained  boys  and  girls  fail  to  obtain  sat- 
isfactory work.  During  the  year  working  certifi- 
cates were  issued  to  eight  hundred  and  fifty-seven 
different  boys  and  six  hundred  and  fifty-three  dif- 
ferent girls — a  total  of  one  thousand  five  hundred 
and  ten  persons  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  years 
of  age  who  had  to  quit  school  to  go  to  work.  Of 
this  number  one  hundred  and  fifty-two  boys  and 
one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  girls  obtained  two 
certificates  during  the  year,  indicating  that  they  held 
two  different  jobs.  Forty  boys  and  twenty-eight 
girls  obtained  three  certificates,  or  held  three  differ- 
ent jobs.  Ten  boys  and  three  girls  obtained  four 
certificates.     Two  boys  and  one  girl  obtained  five 


278  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

each.  Two  boys  received  six  certificates,  and  one 
boy,  to  quote  a  report  made  on  part-time  education, 
"had  the  distinction  of  getting  seven  different  jobs 
for  which  he  secured  working  certificates  during  the 
year." 

Of  the  eight  hundred  and  fifty-seven  boys  who 
quit  school  to  go  to  work,  twenty-nine  were  under 
the  sixth  grade,  two  hundred  and  sixty-five  were  in 
the  sixth  grade,  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  in  the 
seventh  grade,  one  hundred  and  thirty  were  in  the 
eighth  grade  and  one  hundred  and  ninety-five  were 
above  the  eighth  grade.  The  Indiana  law  requires 
the  equivalent  of  a  fifth-grade  education  before  a 
working  certificate  is  granted,  and  hence  the  number 
quitting  school  before  the  sixth  grade  is  very  small. 

The  demand  for  trained  workers  in  industry, 
business  and  agriculture  is  emphasized  in  other 
chapters.  Likewise  the  great  economic  loss  from 
lack  of  training,  skill  or  native  aptitude  of  the 
workers.  Occupations  and  individuals  both  may  be 
flexible,  as  Ayres  says.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  sig- 
nificant waste  of  energy  when  individuals  attempt 
to  do  work  for  which  they  are  wholly  unsuited  by 
temperament,  and  this  waste  may  be  attributed  to  a 
lack  of  vocational  guidance  in  our  public  schools. 

It  is  impossible  to  compute  or  approximately  to 
guess  at  the  economic  loss  due  to  the  unwise  choice 
of  vocations,  to  the  aimless  drifting  of  untrained 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  279 

boys  and  girls,  and  the  want  of  trained  workers  in 
all  branches  of  industry. 

It  is  not  alone  sufficient  to  establish  a  complete 
system  of  vocational  education.  We  must  also  estab- 
|Klish  a  proper  relationship  between  vocational  educa- 
tion and  industry  and  between  the  learner  and  our 
revised  and  revitalized  educational  system.  This 
may  mean  a  complete  reorganization  of  industry  to 
meet  such  conditions  as  the  state  is  determined  to 
fix  as  entrance  requirements  for  the  worker.  It  cer- 
tainly will  mean  radical  departures  in  our  curricu- 
lum. Perhaps  it  must  be  shot  through  with  the  idea 
that  the  life-career  motive  is  to  dominate  everything. 
We  may  find  it  necessary  to  do  considerable  experi- 
menting in  the  psychological  laboratory,  and  the 
vocational  counselor  may  be  a  somewhat  expensive 
addition  to  the  pay-roll  of  our  public  schools.  We 
may  find  it  necessary  to  make  continuation  and  part-, 
time  schools  universal.  These  schools  may  involve 
a  strict  supervision  of  certain  industries  by  the  state 
that  "the  child's  future  usefulness,  not  the  present 
balance  sheet,  shall  be  the  measure  of  the  success  of 
this  guidance  into  vocations." 

The  vocational  instincts  of  the  child,  it  is  now  be- 
lieved, may  begin  to  be  apparent  at  the  age  of  twelve 
or  fourteen,  since  a  striking  identity  has  been  found 
between  the  occupational  interests  of  certain  chil- 
dren in  the  upper  elementary  grades  and  their  occu- 


( 


280  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

pational  interests  in  later  years.  It  is  reasonably 
certain  that  every  child  begins  to  develop  vocational 
interests  not  later  than  adolescence,  an^g/hile  these 
interests  may  not  be  permanent,  they  will  serve  as  a 
proper  basis  of  education  so  long  as  they  are  domi- 
nant. 

Vocational  guidance  must  not  be  a  forced  process. 
Nor  does  it  consist  merely  in  employment  bureaus 
for  young  men  and  young  women.  To  quote  the 
report  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor:10  "Vocational  guid- 
ance does  not  mean  selecting  a  pursuit  for  a  child 
or  finding  a  place  for  him.  It  means  rather  leading 
him  and  his  parents  to  consider  the  matter  them- 
selves, study  the  child's  taste  and  possibilities,  to  de- 
cide for  what  he  is  best  fitted  and  to  take  definite 
steps  toward  securing  for  him  the  necessary  prepa- 
ration or  training."  Nicholas  Murray  Butler  sets 
out  the  work  of  vocational  preparation  and  guidance 
as  "the  problem  of  how  to  take  this  great  mass  of 
young  people  and  to  see  to  it  that  while  they  are 
beginning  to  learn  life  they  shall  learn  it  in  some 
effective  fashion,  by  making  use  of  some  talent,  of 
some  predisposition,  taste,  desire  or  need,  in  order 
that  when  they  finally  swing  clear  of  the  structure 
provided  for  their  education  and  training  they  shall 
be  able  to  stand  up  straight  as  self-supporting  citi- 
zens and  to  do  something  and  do  it  in  a  way  that  is 
economically  worth  while." 

1C  Twenty-fifth  Annual  Report,  1910,  p.  411. 


VOCATIONAL    GUIDANCE  281 

Obtaining  work  for  the  young  worker  may  be  a 
part  of  vocational  guidance  and  may  be  carried  on 
in  connection  with  it.  But  this  is  only  a  limited 
^-^phase  of  the  wider  effort.  The  vocational  counselor 
who  understands  thoroughly  the  possibilities  of  a 
chosen  vocation  may  instil  in  the  young  mind  and 
heart  a  lasting  passion  for  the  vocation  and  an 
abiding  love  for  everything  that  goes  with  it.  No 
occupation  chosen  under  the  sanction  of  vocational 
guidance  is  without  a  wealth  of  inspirational  mate- 
rial, without  its  peculiar  idealism,  which  the  voca- 
tional counselor  must  point  out. 

The  problem  of  vocational  guidance  is  quite  as 
complex  as  the  industrial  and  commercial  society  in 
which  we  live,  an  altogether  different  problem  from 
that  of  another  era,  when  population  was  largely 
static  and  the  son  automatically  chose  his  father's 
occupation.  Vocational  guidance  is  now  an  indis- 
pensable department  of  public  education  because 
education  is  to  be  made,  in  spirit  and  letter,  thor- 
oughly democratic.  As  a  consequence  of  vocational 
training,  industry  is  to  be  shot  through  with  democ- 
racy. Vocational  guidance  is  to  make  of  it  an 
efficient  democracy. 

Frank  M.  Leavitt11  has  stated  that  whatever  may 
be  the  purposes  of  vocational  education,  from  the 

11  Frank  M.  Leavitt,  Associate  Professor  of  Industrial  Edu- 
cation, University  of  Chicago ;  address  before  National  So- 
ciety for  Promotion  of  Industrial  Education,  Seventh  Annual 
Meeting,  Grand  Rapids,  1913 ;  Bulletin  18,  p.  122. 


282  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

standpoint  of  vocational  guidance,  the  state  can  have 
but  one  interest  or  one  concern,  and  that  is  the  wel- 
fare of  the  individual  child.  Vocational  guidance 
demands  that  public  educational  agencies  have  at 
their  disposal  the  career  of  the  child  from  the  age  of, 
say,  five  to  the  age  of  eighteen,  or  better,  twenty- 
one,  years.  It  is  a  tremendous  responsibility— the 
care  of  the  child  during  the  period  of  transition 
from  school  to  work,  yet  one  which  vocational  guid- 
ance as  a  conscious  and  positive  factor  in  the  new 
educational  program  can  not  well  escape.  It  in- 
volves a  complete  knowledge  of  the  world's  oppor- 
tunities for  service,  the  moral  consequences  of  the 
school  and  work,  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  con- 
ditions surrounding  each  occupation  and,  more  than 
all  else,  the  social  and  civic  conditions  and  conse- 
quences of  work.  I 
Vocational  guidance  must  depend  for  its  informaj- 
tion  and  insight  somewhat  upon  private  voluntary 
associations  and  public  agencies  already  in  existence. 
The  National  Child  Labor  Committee  has  collected 
and  tabulated  important  information  showing*  the 
extent  of  child  labor  in  every  important  industry, 
and  for  the  purpose  of  conserving  our  human  re- 
sources, the  resources  of  our  children,  this  informa- 
tion may  be  used  in  formulating  the  constructive 
program  of  the  vocational  guidance  movement.  In 
this  connection  the  reports  of  the  Census  Bureau,  the 
state  departments  of  labor,  the  Department  of  Com*- 


VOCATIONAL   GUIDANCE  283 

merce  and  the  factory  inspection  bureaus  are  inval- 
uable. 

"When  the  best  possible  adjustment  shall  have 
been  attained  between  work  and  workmen/ '  says 
Doctor  Ayres,12  "each  one  will  have  his  full  oppor- 
tunity to  achieve  at  least  something  for  common 
wealth  and  common  weal.  The  tasks  of  the  world 
will  be  better  done  and  the  workers  will  receive 
greater  rewards,  deeper  joy,  and  fuller  satisfaction 
in  their  doing." 

To  sum  up:  An  insignificant  percentage  of  our 
working  people  receive  scientific  training  for  efficient 
service.  Some  professions  are  badly  overcrowded 
because  in  them  only  has  a  scientific  approach  been 
developed.  We  have  proposed  a  system  of  education 
for  efficient  service  which  we  call  vocational,  a  sys- 
tem founded  on  the  native  prepossession  of  the  in- 
dividual to  a  particular  calling,  with  certain  peculiar 
limitations  we  may  call  external.  Those  external 
limitations  are  the  conditions  patent  to  certain 
trades,  industries  or  callings  which  make  it  inadvis- 
able for  young  men  to  engage  in  them.  At  this 
point  we  are  to  have  the  cooperation  of  the  voca- 
tional counselor,  who  is  to  assist  young  men  in  the 
choice  of  a  life  calling.  From  facts  gleaned  by 
surveys,  the  vocational  counselor  is  to  point  out 
the  vocational  opportunities  disclosed  by  surveys, 

"Address  before  organization  meeting  of  Vocational  Guid- 
ance Association,  Grand  Rapids,  1913. 


284  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

together  with  disadvantages  and  drawbacks.  With 
the  assistance  of  the  vocational  counselor  and  -the 
sympathetic  direction  of  parents  and  teacher,  we 
shall  be  able  to  steer  boys  away  from  occupational 
blind  alleys  and  into  wholesome  remunerative  em- 
ployments. Whatever  the  psychological  laboratory 
can  contribute  to  successful  vocational  guidance  we 
shall  also  use.  In  the  main,  after  having  pointed 
out  occupational  limitations  and  opportunities,  the 
young  man  will  be  left  chiefly  to  a  free  choice. 
When  the  possibilities  of  this  program  have  been 
fully  realized,  we  shall  have  realized  also  the  great- 
est possibilities  of  the  conservation  movement,  the 
conservation  of  human  energy  and  talents. 


CHAPTER  XV 

TRAINING  OF  TEACHERS 

Lack  of  trained  teachers  for  vocational  work — Need  of  prac- 
tical experience — Experience  in  teaching  and  experience  in 
life — Prejudice  to  be  overcome — Wasted  efforts  from  unedu- 
cated and  inefficient  teachers — Various  plans  for  training 
teachers — The  present  public-school  teacher  is  not  equipped 
for  instruction  in  agriculture,  the  skilled  trades  or  household 
arts — Active  business  men  may  be  drawn  upon  for  teaching 
in  commercial  schools — Shortcomings  of  the  rural  teachers — 
Only  one  in  five  teachers  is  trained — How  sociological  sur- 
veys may  widen  the  vision  of  the  untrained  teacher — Summer 
schools,  correspondence  schools  and  extension  work  as  sup- 
plemental aids. 

If  it  is  admitted  that  vocational  education  is  to  be 
undertaken  as  a  definite  concrete  program  for  the 
future,  then  administrators  must  look  naturally  to 
means  and  methods.  There  is  the  question  of  dual 
or  unit  control  of  our  present  so-called  liberal 
scheme  and  the  proposed  occupational  scheme,  which 
we  consider  a  matter  dependent  largely  upon  local 
conditions  and  therefore  not  fundamental,  and  with 
which  we  do  not  here  deal,  except  to  say  that  what- 
ever the  faults  or  failures  of  liberal  education,  it 
ought  not  to  fail  wholly  as  a  source  of  ideals  for 
the  new  model.  There  are  the  problems  of  occupa- 
tional surveys,  of  subject-matter  and  text-books 
which  may  be  dealt  with  intelligently  and  wisely,  if 

285 


286  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

only  we  are  able  to  enlist  capable  teachers,  men  and 
women  fired  with  enthusiasm,  surcharged  with  tech- 
nical information  and  endowed  with^native  prepos- 
sessions forjmparting  information.     ] 

"There  is  great  danger,"  as  Charles  A.  Prosser 
says,1  "that  our  enthusiasm  for  vocational  schools 
will  lead  us  to  establish  them  faster  than  we  are  able 
to  secure  teachers  possessing  not  only  the  academic 
and  technical  education,  but  also  the  practical  experi- 
ence necessary  in  order  to  carry  on  the  work  success- 
fully. There  is  danger  that  in  some  quarters,  at 
least,  the  regular  school  men  will  attempt  to  deal 
with  the  educational  needs  of  the  wage-earner  by 
the  application  of  a  philosophy  of  education  through 
a  traditional  method  and  a  time-honored  course  of 
study,  when  it  is  all  too  apparent  to  the  practical 
man  of  affairs  that  in  order  to  equip  him  to  meet  the 
demands  of  industry  we  must  give  the  worker  the 
skill  and  the  knowledge  which  he  can  apply  directly 
in  his  work ;  and  when  it  is  all  too  plain  to  those  who 
know  the  worker  best  that  in  order  to  reach  him 
with  our  training  we  must  use  his  experience  on  the 
job  as  the  means  of  teaching  the  applied  mathe- 
matics, science,  art  technique  and  economics  that  will 
make  him  a  better  workman  and  a  better  citizen." 

It  should  be  recognized  at  the  outset  that  the 
problem  of  obtaining  teachers  for  the  reorganized 
program  in  education  divides  itself  into  three  sep- 
arate and  distinct  problems — one  is  to  obtain  teach- 

1  The  Training  of  the  Factory  Worker  Through  Industrial 
Education,  p.  18. 


TRAINING    OF   TEACHERS  287 

ers  for  the  prevocational  schools;  the  second  is  to 
obtain  teachers  for  the  vocational  schools  proper  and 
the  third  to  obtain  teachers  for  continuation,  eve- 
ning and  part-time  schools,  extension  courses  and  in- 
struction by  correspondence.  It  seems  altogether 
possible  for  teachers  trained  under  the  system  now 
generally  extant,  with  some  special  study  of  aims, 
program  and  method  of  the  occupational  interests, 
granted  a  native  sympathy  for  the  work,  to  make  the 
beginnings,  at  least,  in  the  prevocational  work.  Ex- 
perience will  soon  demonstrate  how  well  they  meas- 
ure up  to  the  new  opportunity.  As  regards  the 
vocational  school  proper,  the  problem  is  far  more 
difficult.  Here  teachers  must  possess  not  only  a  high 
order  of  technical  skill,  but  must  know  how  to  im- 
part it.  For  industrial  trade  schools,  teachers  should 
be  drawn  from  among  the  most  highly  skilled  work- 
ers in  the  respective  trades  and  difficulty  is  bound  to 
be  encountered  in  the  difference  between  what  skilled 
workers  receive  in  following  their  trade  and  what 
their  initial  wages  as  teachers  might  be. 

School  administrators  should  know  at  the  outset 
that  the  services  of  such  workers  as  teachers  are 
worth  far  more  to  society  than  they  can  possibly  be 
worth  to  industry,  whatever  the  wage  may  be.  As 
far  as  possible  the  teachers  in  vocational  schools  of 
whatever  kind,  for  industry,  for  business,  for  the 
home  and  for  the  farm,  should  be  drawn  from  men 
and  women  of  practical  experience.    Nor  is  it  suf- 


288  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

ficient  that  they  merely  shall  have  had  practical 
experience  at  the  beginnings  of  their  careers  as  teach- 
ers. If  trade  teachers,  they  should  be  required  to 
spend  a  portion  of  their  time,  at  least  every  two  or 
three  years,  in  actual  pursuit  of  the  trade.  The  same 
requirement  should  be  set  up  for  teachers  in  com- 
mercial schools,  agricultural  schools  and  schools  for 
instruction  in  home  economics,  household  manage- 
ment and  domestic  science.  Agricultural  teachers 
ought  to  be  farmers  first  and  teachers  afterward. 

Teachers  for  continuation,  evening  and  part-time 
schools,  extension  and  correspondence  courses,  while 
requiring  the  very  highest  order  of  skill  and  tech- 
nical knowledge  should  be  more  available  since  this 
work  is  already  fairly  well  begun  by  various  private 
and  public  agencies  and  for  the  further  reason  that 
teachers  of  part-time  or  extension  courses  need  not 
abandon  their  private  pursuits,  but  may  approach 
the  student  for  part-time  or  extension  courses  with 
problems  that  arise  day  by  day  in  their  own  personal 
business.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  part-time 
courses  and  extension  courses  especially  are  de- 
signed for  workers  who  have  had  some  practical  ex- 
perience and  it  is  therefore  imperative  that  teachers 
for  this  work  be  possessed  of  the  very  greatest  prac- 
tical skill  and  the  broadest  technical  knowledge. 
Some  of  the  well  advertised  directors  of  agricultural 
extension  work  are  made  to  appear  ludicrous  when 
face  to  face  with  actual  rather  than  imaginary  farm 


TRAINING   OF   TEACHERS         289 

problems.  Vocational  extension  work  must  not  be 
discredited  by  dreamers.  Some  German  states, 
Wiirttemberg  for  example,  refused  to  establish  vo- 
cational schools  at  all  until  a  sufficient  corps  of 
teachers  had  been  prepared  previously  for  the  work. 

Of  course,  vocational  teachers  need  to  be  pos- 
sessed at  the  outset  with  native  intelligence  of  a 
high  order,  a  good  academic  education  and  a  pleas- 
ing personality.  In  fact,  these  qualities  are  de- 
manded of  all  teachers.  But  vocational  teachers 
must  be  especially  experienced  in  the  art,  trade  or 
occupation  which  they  are  engaged  to  teach.  If 
they  are  industrial  or  agricultural  teachers,  they 
must  be  skilled  in  the  latest  processes  and  practises 
of  the  vocation  and  capable  of  commanding  the  re- 
spect of  the  men  actively  engaged.  Not  only  this, 
but  they  must  know  enough  to  contribute  to  the  so- 
lution of  the  unsolved  problems  of  the  industry, 
particularly  if  they  are  employed  in  the  strictly  vo- 
cational school  or  if  engaged  in  extension  work 
with  mature  persons  of  practical  experience. 

Until  the  boy  has  reached  the  fifth  or  sixth  grade, 
his  learning  is  comparatively  routine.  It  consists  in 
learning  how  to  read,  write  and  perform  the  simple 
operations  in  arithmetic.  But  arithmetic  especially 
may  be  made  practical  from  the  first.  Arithmetic 
may  be  made  a  matter  of  "object"  teaching  from  the 
simplest  to  highest  processes.  After  the  boy  has 
reached  the  fifth  or  sixth  grade,  his  teacher  is  going 


290  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

to  determine  with  what  spirit  he  later  enters  the  vo- 
cation to  which  the  community  life  will  call  him. 
After  this  age,  it  is  highly  important  that  the  teacher 
know  as  much  about  all  phases  of  life  as  it  is  possi- 
ble to  know. 

Professional  educators  lay  great  stress  upon  ex- 
perience in  teaching.  Experience  is  important,  but 
what  is  needed  as  the  complement  of  experience  in 
teaching  is  experience  in  life;  experience  with  all 
kinds  of  life;  experience,  if  possible,  with  many  vo- 
cations, and  intimate  friendships  with  people  in  all 
walks  of  life,  the  professional  man,  the  railroad 
man,  the  factory  worker,  the  social  service  worker, 
the  trade  union  leader,  the  department  store  clerk, 
public  officials,  perhaps  a  few  ward,  bosses  in  the 
city,  writers  and  lecturers.  It  would  be  a  splendid 
thing  for  a  young  man,  especially  if  he  is  going  to 
teach  in  the  country,  to  know  a  few  "down-and- 
outers,"  a  hobo  or  two  who  have  been  made  so  by 
that  side  of  city  life  which  the  first  glamour  does  not 
reveal.  It  is  unfortunate  that  geography  must  be 
taught  by  young  men  and  women  who  have  not 
journeyed  beyond  the  confines  of  their  native  county 
or  state,  who  have  not  beheld  the  grandeur  of  the 
mountain,  the  majesty  of  great  rivers  and  limitless 
expanse  of  the  sea.  This  is  unfortunate,  but  less  so 
than  to  charge  the  young  man  who  can't  drive  a 
nail  straight  with  teaching  carpentry. 

This  is  the  experience  that  counts.   It  is  the  kind 


TRAINING    OF   TEACHERS  291 

of  experience  that  would  count  most  of  all  in  our 
rural  schools  if  it  were  possible  to  get  teachers  who 
possess  it.  Since  we  can  not  do  that,  or  very  near  it, 
we  shall  have  to  depend  upon  training  schools  to  im- 
part the  information  and  instil  the  sympathy.  Very 
much,  therefore,  depends  upon  the  kind  of  teachers 
who  direct  the  activities  of  the  teachers'  training 
schools.  They  must  be  more  than  mere  book  worms, 
more  than  mere  theorists,  more  than  mere  automa- 
tons. And  they  will  be  all  of  these  and  nothing  more 
unless  they  keep  in  constant  personal  touch  with  the 
social,  political,  religious  and  economic  conditions  of 
that  part  of  the  country  for  which  they  are  train- 
ing teachers.  But  it  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  rural 
school-teachers  must  be  trained  for  effecting  an  ad- 
justment to  these  conditions.  They  must  be  trained 
to  direct  the  vocational  instincts  of  country  boys,  to 
inspire  them  with  an  overpowering  love  for  work, 
to  impart  definite  practical  knowledge  for  growing 
maximum  crops,  and  doing  everything  that  may  be 
done  on  the  farm  in  the  very  best  way. 

It  is  extremely  doubtful  whether  the  average 
teacher  in  the  public  schools  is  keenly  in  sympathy 
with  vocational  education  and  he  must  not  be  per- 
mitted to  distort  its  purposes,  even  in  the  prevoca- 
tional  stage,  by  drawing  upon  subject-matter  which 
has  no  relation  to  life.  Upon  teachers  already  em- 
ployed in  the  public  schools  must  fall  the  initial 
responsibility  of  giving  prevocational   instruction. 


292  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

If  they  fail  to  measure  up  to  the  initial  responsi- 
bility, they  will  have  to  look  to  the  period  of  their 
tenure.  Teachers  who  complain  about  vocational 
education  do  so  principally  because  they  may 
have  something  new  to  learn,  a  different  point  of 
view  to  acquire.  They  regard  vocational  education 
as  a  reflection  against  their  ability,  or  their  vision 
or  their  long  and  "successful"  records  as  teachers 
and,  so  believing,  are  apt  to  oppose  the  movement 
or  secretly  resist  its  encroachments.  Teachers  who 
can  see  no  more  in  the  movement  than  an  attack 
on  time-honored  principles  and  methods  are  not  ex- 
ceptional in  their  bristling  attitude  of  self-defense. 
The  movement  has  its  origin  outside  the  profession 
for  the  most  part.  Do  not  surgeons  scorn  the  cru- 
sade of  publicity  against  vivisection  and  lawyers  re- 
sent the  layman's  attacks  on  the  courts?  Does  the 
manager  welcome  suggestions  by  the  "straphanger" 
as  regards  the  operation  of  a  street  railway?  Of 
course,  many  teachers  complain.  They  are  quite  as 
human  as  surgeons  or  lawyers  or  street  railway  man- 
agers. But  they  have  definite  duties  to  perform 
under  a  reorganized  and  rejuvenated  educational 
program  and  duties  they  can  easily  perform  if  they 
only  determine  to  meet  them  fairly  and  honestly. 
Even  though  the  burden  may  be  additional,  it  is  good 
for  teachers  and  for  the  public  schools  that  it  be  as- 
sumed.  It  ought  to  be  done  cheerfully. 

When  the  teaching  of  agriculture  first  was  at- 


TRAINING    OF    TEACHERS  293 

tempted  in  this  country,  instruction  was  left  to  teach- 
ers who  had  no  special  fitness  whatever  for  the 
work.  Such  efforts  were  worse  than  useless  because 
the  pupil's  native  interest  in  agriculture  was  in 
danger  of  being  neutralized  by  ignorant  and  ineffi- 
cient instruction.  Agriculture  is  a  subject  which 
demands  rather  wide  technical  knowledge  of  the 
teacher  in  the  vocational  school  proper  as  well  as 
native  sympathy  and  practical  experience,  and  it 
were  better  to  postpone  instruction  indefinitely  than 
to  leave  it  to  teachers  whose  only  preparation  is  ob- 
tained from  keeping  a  few  pages  ahead  of  the  class, 
in  a  prescribed  text-book.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  agri- 
cultural education  in  most  public  schools  still  re- 
mains inefficient  and  unscientific  as  compared  to 
what  it  may  become  under  competent  teachers. 
Teachers  who  know  nothing  of  the  science  of  agri- 
culture should  be  spared  from  any  serious  effort  at 
instruction. 

What  is  true  of  the  teaching  of  agriculture  is  true 
of  vocational  education  generally.  Incompetent 
teachers  will  surely  brjng  discredit  upotTthe  whoje 
system!  f  they~are  permitted  todefile  it,  or  djstorL 
it  into  the  narrow  channel^joXl^^^t^QnaI_SletbQ4s 
usean5)[jhej^^ 

jects. 

""Two  things  are  demanded  of  the  teacher  in  the 
vocational  school,  part-time  instruction  and  exten- 
sion courses,  and  they  should  be  required  without  ex- 


294  LEARNING    TO    EARN 


ception  by  school  officials  whose  diity  it  is  to  select 
teachers  of  vocational  subjects^Une  is  technical. 


knowledge  nf  the  sn|jepf_ariH  the  other,  is  practical 
experience  in  usinp^  that  technical  knowledge.  As  a 
matter  of  choice,  the  practical  farmer  who  has  made 
a  success  of  that  calling  is  better  equipped  to  teach 
agriculture  than  the  boy  or  girl  who  is  able  only 
to  make  a  passing  grade  on  questions  taken  from  a 
text-book  that  has  been  learned  by  rote.  Likewise, 
the  practical  carpenter  will  be  a  more  successful  in- 
structor in  woodworking  than  the  high-school  grad- 
uate armed  with  all  the  books  published  on  the 
subject. 

There  is  no  intention  to  underestimate  the  value 
of  pedagogy  in  vocational  education,  especially  in 
the  vocational  school.  It  is  valuable  except,  as  be- 
tween method  and  practical  experience,  there  can  be 
no  choice.  The  ideal  teacher  of  vocational  subjects 
is  one  whojias  had  enough  native  interest  to  follow 
the  vocation  as  a  matter^Tclwice_and  wnonas_sup- 

lemente(Tthat_practical  experience  witl 
proyjdSTjfbr  teachers  of  thatlmDject. 

For  industrial  trade  schools  and  schools  of 
household  arts  already  created,  there  are  teachers 
available  to  supply  only  a  small  percentage  of  the 
demand.  Training  schools  need  to  get  hold  of  com- 
petent journeymen  who  are  best  fitted  for  responsible 
positions.  The  wages  must  be  made  sufficiently  re- 
munerative to  attract  men  who  are  already  skilled 


TRAINING    OF   TEACHERS  295 

artisans,  because  they  only  are  fitted  to  teach  indus- 
trial processes,  effectively. 

The  State  Normal  School  at  Albany,  N.  Y.,  main- 
tains a  night  school  for  the  training  of  trade 
teachers.  After  some  experimenting,  fifteen  practi- 
cal workmen  were  chosen  for  a  night  course  for 
teacher  training.  The  minimum  requirement  of 
practical  experience  was  five  years  in  addition  to 
apprenticeship.  Four  trades,  pattern  making,  cabi- 
net making,  metal  working  and  machine  work,  were 
taught.  The  class  met  twice  a  week,  on  Tuesday  and 
Thursday  evenings,  from  seven  to  nine  thirty  o'clock. 
The  course  lasted  forty  weeks.  Shop  work,  drawing, 
shop  mathematics  and  the  principles  of  teaching 
were  taught.  The  school  sought  to  show  by 
example  how  to  deal  with  immature  and  unskilled 
students  and  the  candidates  were  required  to  as- 
sume the  attitude  of  green  apprentices  and  go  over 
simple  processes  in  the  same  manner  as  they  would 
be  presented  to  beginners.  The  professional  work 
included  the  principles  of  teaching;  the  necessity  of 
outlining  and  the  principles  of  planning  work;  ar- 
rangement of  the  course  of  study  and  the  use  of 
equipment ;  the  correlation  between  the  different  de- 
partments of  the  school;  the  price  of  materials; 
method  in  recitations  and  examinations;  the  use  of 
records  and  efficiency  cards  and  other  practical  de- 
tails of  the  work. 

The  Federal  Commission  on  Vocational  Educa- 


296  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

tion  recognized  fully  the  need  of  practical  experi- 
ence as  the  basis  of  preparation  required  of  the 
vocational  teacher.  Section  12  of  the  bill  pending 
in  Congress  prescribes  how  the  several  states  may 
receive  the  benefits  of  the  appropriation  for  train- 
ing vocational  teachers.  These  training  courses  must 
be  approved  by  the  state  board,  which  in  turn  is  ac- 
countable to  the  federal  board.  The  bill  provides 
that  "such  training  shall  be  given  only  to  persons 
who  have  had  adequate  vocational  experience  or 
contact  in  the  line  of  work  for  which  they  are  pre- 
paring themselves  as  teachers,  supervisors,  or  direct- 
ors, or  who  are  acquiring  such  experience  or  contact 
as  a  part  of  their  training." 

The  Federal  Commission  believed  the  problem  of 
obtaining  an  adequate  supply  of  vocational  teachers 
"must  be  worked  out  by  gradual  experiment  in  part- 
time  and  evening  classes  which  afford  opportunities 
for  persons  who  possess  skill  in  their  callings  to 
acquire  experience  in  the  classroom  and  shop  instruc- 
tion while  still  continuing  their  regular  employment." 
The  Commission  was  not  favorably  impressed 
with  the  present  normal-school  facilities  for  train- 
ing industrial  teachers.  "At  the  present  time," 
said  the  Commission,  "not  a  half  dozen  schools  exist 
in  the  United  States  which  afford  an  adequate  op- 
portunity to  secure  thoroughgoing  preparation  for 
the  teaching  of  trade  and  industrial  subjects."  Yet 
there  are  more  than  three  hundred  colleges  and  uni- 


TRAINING   OF   TEACHERS  297 

versities  in  the  country  that  maintain  teachers'  train- 
ing departments. 

"Our  vocational  schools/'  says  David  Snedden, 
".  .  .  must  be  taught  by  persons  whose  first  quali- 
fication is  to  be  found  in  their  mastery  of  a  craft  and 
who  have  somewhere  added  to  this  same  mastery 
the  art  of  directing  learners  and  of  imparting  knowl- 
edge. .  .  .  Teachers  of  printing  must  first  have 
been  printers;  of  plumbing,  plumbers;  of  farming, 
farmers;  of  jewelry  design,  jewelry  workers;  and 
so  through  the  long  list  of  vocations  for  which  prac- 
tical school  training  is  now  an  admitted  possibility." 

The  present  public-school  teacher  is  not  fitted  to 
teach  the  skilled  trades  and  household  arts  to  girls, 
generally  because  she  knows  little  of  either.  She 
knows  nothing  about  trades  and  the  life  of  the 
woman  worker  in  a  trade.  She  may  know  something 
about  the  processes  of  household  arts  without  being 
really  educated  in  the  art,  in  which  case  she  may 
train  girls  to  be  excellent  cooks  or  clever  seam- 
stresses without  imparting  inspiration  and  love  for 
the  science  of  food  preparation  and  the  art  of 
hand-made  and  home-made  clothing.  There  is  not 
much  to  be  gained  from  the  household  economics 
which  has  no  wider  vision  than  palatable  food  and 
neat  clothing,  desirable  as  both  are.  In  trade-school 
teaching  for  girls,  the  woman  who  has  experience 
only  is  liable  to  have  acquired  prejudices  on  social, 
economic  and  industrial  questions  which  wholly  un- 


298  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

fit  her  for  the  position  of  a  teacher.  It  is  better  to 
avoid  all  such  questions  until  such  time  as  the  stu- 
dent may  sift  opinions  for  herself.  While  the  pres- 
ent public-school  teacher  is  too  much  disposed  to 
academic  methods,  the  trade  worker  without  prep- 
aration for  teaching  as  a  vocation  is  apt  to  be  too 
little  disposed  to  follow  the  processes  of  the  learner's 
mind. 

Teachers  in  girls'  trade  schools  should  he  hroad- 
minded^intelligent  and  experienced, jmt  they  should 
understand  the  principles  of  teaching.  They  should 
be  familiar  with  the  household  arts,  health  and  hy- 
giene, academic  and  art  education  in  the  trade,  busi- 
ness organization  and  shop  management.  They 
should  be  informed,  without  being  possessed  of  vio- 
lent prejudice,  on  social  and  industrial  questions  of 
interest  to  women  workers  in  many  industries.  Prac- 
tical teaching  in  practise  schools  will  assist  the 
young  woman  skilled  in  the  trade  to  become  an  effi- 
cient teacher.  Teachers  should  keep  in  constant 
touch  with  trade  conditions  and  new  processes 
whether  their  students  be  boys  or  girls. 

In  commercial  education,  the  division  of  work 
logically  leaves  to  the  public-school  teacher,  whose 
education  and  training  are  remote  from  the  needs 
of  business,  the  duty  of  imparting  prevocational  in- 
struction. While  the  present  corps  of  teachers  may 
fail  woefully  at  the  outset,  a  diligent  effort  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  present-day  needs  of  business 


TRAINING   OF   TEACHERS  299 


will  enrich  the  life  of  the  teacher  and  greatly  re- 
lieve the  monotonous  routine  in  his  daily  program 
of  instruction.  It  seems  reasonable  to  believe  that 
the  public-school  teacher  may  become  efficient  alto- 
gether in  the  preliminary  training  for  business  if 
only  his  point  of  view  is  changed. 

There  are  probably  less  than  twenty  thousand 
teachers  in  the  United  States  devoting  all  or  a  part 
of  their  time  to  commercial  instruction  in  public  and 
private  schools.  Most  of  the  number  have  been 
poorly  trained,  yet  they  are  mature  men  and  women 
and  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  quit  teaching  and 
complete  their  training.  Upon  this  group,  although 
deficient  except  in  the  mechanical  processes  of 
business,  we  must  depend  for  our  teachers  during 
the  beginnings  of  commercial  education.  This 
group  of  teachers  and  those  who  are  to  take 
their  places  may  continue  their  training  in  summer 
schools  and  by  correspondence  study.  Here  again, 
as  far  as  we  are  able  to  attract  them,  men  of  actual 
business  experience  must  be  induced,  as  a  public 
duty,  to  give  instruction  in  the  commercial  schools. 
In  the  city,  business  managers  can  be  induced  to 
give  short  lecture  courses  from  which  regularly  em- 
ployed teachers  may  learn  quite  as  much  as  pupils. 

As  in  industrial  trade  schools,  as  far  as  possible, 
commercial  teachers  should  be  drawn  from  men  of 
actual  experience — experience  in  the  business  world 
about  them.  They  will  be  difficult  to  obtain,  but  they 


300  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

will  accomplish  so  much  more.  In  the  advanced  work 
of  commercial  education,  in  the  schools  of  univer- 
sity grade,  and  in  continuation,  part-time  and  ex- 
tension courses,  teachers  must  be  men  and  women 
of  the  widest  practical  experience,  else  they  can  ac- 
complish nothing.  They  will  have  nothing  to  inter- 
est mature  students  of  more  or  less  experience 
themselves. 

"There  has  never  been  a  time  when  there  has 
seemed  to  be  such  a  necessity  for  teachers  in  all 
kinds  of  schools  to  lay  formalism  aside,  as  now. 
Teachers  so  frequently  feel  that  their  position  is  not 
one  of  business,  but  a  profession;  not  in  the  sense 
in  which  a  profession  is  usually  understood,  but  a 
fancied  notion  of  it,  which  prevents  them  from  en- 
tering into  and  becoming  factors  in  the  great  busi- 
ness world.  This  results  sometimes  from  a  fear  on 
the  part  of  the  teacher  that  his  views  will  not  please 
every  one,  and  that  he  may  not  be  able  to  hold  his 
position.  Better  lose  it  than  be  a  mere  satellite. 
Teachers  must  be  men  and  women  of  ideas,  because 
the  business  world  needs  such.  These,  however,  can 
not  be  obtained  without  broad  culture.  Teachers 
must  be  men  and  women  who  are  not  afraid  to  enter 
into  the  business  interests  and  share  the  burdens  of 
the  community.  They  must  be  known  as  workers, 
not  merely  in  the  'teachers'  sense/  but  as  energetic, 
enthusiastic  forces  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  idea 
that  work,  incessant  work,  is  the  price  of  success. 
'He  who  saves  his  life  will  lose  it,  and  he  who  loses 
his  life  will  save  it/  Teachers  must  constantly  keep 
growing,  because  the  business  methods  of  ten  years 


TRAINING    OF    TEACHERS  301 


ago  are  not  the  business  methods  of  to-day,  any 
more  than  the  text-books  of  ten  years  ago  are  the 
text-books  of  to-day."2 

The  training  of  rural  teachers  is  in  part  a  prob- 
lem in  itself.  It  is  fraught  with  peculiarities  to  the 
rural  community  and  can  not  be  solved  except  by 
those  who  have  a  thorough  understanding  of  and 
sympathy  with  conditions  of  life  in  the  country.  No 
statistics  are  available  to  show  what  percentage  of 
boys  in  the  country  schools  become  farmers,  but  the 
percentage  is  large  and  it  is  agriculture  that  must 
determine  the  curriculum  for  the  rural  school.  The 
exceptional  boys  in  the  country  schools  who  have  a 
bent  for  vocations  in  the  city  may  be  assigned  out- 
side work  by  teachers  who  recognize  that  bent 
and  are  able  to  direct  it  in  proper  channels. 

The  trouble  with  country  teachers,  even  urban 
teachers  for  that  matter,  is  that  they  do  not  under- 
stand life.  It  is  doubtful  whether  a  more  sympa- 
thetic view  of  the  possibilities  of  the  farm  can  be 
acquired  than  by  living  for  a  while  in  the  city.  Thus, 
the  ideal  rural  teacher  would  be  a  person  sufficiently 
mature  to  have  obtained  from  living  in  the  city  an 
accurate  estimate  of  its  sociological  conditions.  He 
would,  therefore,  be  the  more  likely  to  understand 
the  exceptional  opportunities  offered  in  these  days 
for  wholesome  and  happy  life  in  the  community 


a  H.  B.  Brown,  President  Valparaiso  University. 


302  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

where  he  teaches  or  else  throw  the  weight  of  his  in- 
fluence and  power  into  a  localized  movement  to 
change  conditions  in  the  community. 

There  is  no  more  unfortunate  situation  than  is  cre- 
ated by  the  young  man  in  charge  of  the  rural  school 
and  upon  whom  must  rest  the  responsibility  of  pre- 
vocational  instruction  in  agriculture,  who  has  seen 
a  little  of  the  glamour  of  city  life  and  has  missed 
its  seamy  side  and  who  arouses  a  spirit  of  discon- 
tent and  longing  for  city  life  in  the  immature  minds 
which  he  is  molding.  Country  life  has  boundless 
possibilities  and  the  rural  teacher,  somehow,  must 
know  what  they  are  and  be  able  to  impart  an  under- 
standing of  them.  If  he  is  a  young  man,  or  woman, 
who  has  been  reared  in  the  neighborhood,  he  is  far 
more  likely  to  understand  and  appreciate  at  their 
full  worth  these  possibilities  if  he  has  also  been  per- 
mitted to  struggle  against  the  current  of  competi- 
tion in  the  city. 

Rural  schools  have  suffered  from  the  tendency  of 
the  better  teachers  to  seek  employment  in  the  cities, 
not  only  because  these  teachers  were  lost  to  the  com- 
munity where  they  were  badly  needed,  but  because 
they  unconsciously  left  behind  them  that  spirit  of 
discontent  with  what  the  country  has  to  offer  and 
which  is  largely  responsible  for  the  unchecked  move- 
ment of  population  from  the  country  to  the  city. 

There  were  about  five  hundred  and  twenty-three 
thousand  public-school  teachers  in  the  United  States 


TRAINING    OF    TEACHERS         303 

in  1912.  The  graduates  of  teacher-training  courses 
in  the  colleges,  universities,  state  normals,  county- 
training  and  high  schools  numbered  about  twenty- 
three  thousand  in  that  year.  Since  the  average  serv- 
ice of  the  public-school  teacher  is  about  five  years,  it 
follows  that  not  more  than  one  in  every  five  teach- 
ers in  1912  was  a  trained  teacher.  For  the  four  out 
of  five  teachers  who  were  not  graduates  of  teachers' 
training  schools,  the  want  of  preparation  undoubt- 
edly fell  most  heavily  on  the  rural  schools  whose 
standard  for  teachers  has  never  been  so  high  as  that 
of  the  city  schools. 

For  want  of  a  full  life  experience,  perhaps  the 
best  training  that  may  be  given  for  prevocational 
teachers  of  agriculture  is  that  of  making  sociological 
surveys  of  the  rural  district  or  township.  These 
surveys  may  include  the  collection  of  facts  bearing 
on  the  character  of  population,  economic,  social  and 
educational  conditions. 

Certain  facts  relative  to  the  population  may  be 
easily  gathered :  the  percentage  of  urban  and  rural 
population;  percentage  of  colored  and  native  born; 
whether  increasing  or  decreasing  and  why ;  number 
of  inhabitants  per  square  mile  and  number  of  illiter- 
ates. 

The  survey  of  economic  conditions  should  set 
forth  the  natural  resources,  mineral  and  vegetable; 
chief  products,  including  manufactured  products, 
crops  for  market  and  for  home  consumption ;  num- 


304  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

ber  and  size  of  farms,  percentage  of  owners  and 
tenants;  percentage  of  wage-earners;  average  an- 
nual wage ;  increase  or  decrease  in  land  values,  farm 
crops,  live  stock  and  machinery  and  sources  of  food 
and  clothing. 

The  survey  of  social  conditions  should  reveal  the 
forms  of  recreation,  including  athletics,  dances, 
motion  picture  shows,  pool  rooms,  lecture  courses, 
literary  societies,  picnics,  secret  and  fraternal  organ- 
izations; means  of  transportation  and  communica- 
tion; moral  conditions  including  tendencies  toward 
criminal  practises  and  sanitary  conditions. 

Among  the  facts  which  should  be  gathered  in  the 
educational  survey  are  the  community  interest  in 
school  buildings,  the  use  of  school  buildings  for 
community  gatherings,  amount  of  schooling  re- 
ceived by  the  average  individual  in  the  district ;  pu- 
pils who  have  left  school  before  completing  the 
course,  and  why ;  public  and  private  libraries ;  num- 
ber and  character  of  magazines  taken  and  read  in 
the  district. 

These  suggestions  are  given  to  those  rural  teach- 
ers who  want  to  undertake  a  survey  and  because 
they  are  used  as  the  basis  of  surveys  in  teachers' 
training  schools.  Surveys  similar  to  this  one  have 
been  made  by  the  Georgia  Club  at  the  State  Normal 
School  at  Athens.  The  president  of  this  club  gives 
the  following  description  of  its  work  :3 

8  See  Bulletin  No.  23,  1913,  United  States  Bureau  of  Educa- 
tion. 


TRAINING   OF   TEACHERS         305 

"The  club  is  composed  of  one  hundred  and  forty- 
one  volunteers  from  the  faculty  and  student  body. 
Spare  time  is  used  by  individuals  and  county  groups 
for  work  upon  special  chosen  topics;  and  one  hour 
each  week  is  given  to  club  discussions. 

"For  two  years  the  club  has  been  studying  the  va- 
rious phases  and  problems  of  population,  agriculture, 
manufacturing,  wealth  and  taxation,  farm  owner- 
ship and  tenancy,  public  roads,  public  sanitation, 
cooperative  farm  enterprise,  schools  and  churches  in 
Georgia.  The  state  has  been  passing  under  search- 
ing review  as  a  whole,  and  in  detail,  county  by 
county.  Every  step  of  the  way,  Georgia  is  compared 
with  the  other  states  of  the  Union  and  ranked  ac- 
cordingly. But  also  her  gains  and  losses,  between 
1900  and  1910,  are  exhibited  in  a  ten-year  balance 
sheet. 

"Meanwhile  the  various  student  groups  have  been 
working  out  similar  balance  sheets  for  their  home 
counties,  each  county  being  ranked  among  the  other 
counties  of  the  state  in  all  the  particulars  covered  in 
the  club  studies.  These  bare  facts  are  then  translated 
into  simple  running  narratives  for  easy  reading 
by  the  wayfaring  man  back  in  the  home  coun- 
ties. Thirty-six  such  surveys  have  thus  far  been 
given  to  the  public.  They  embody  facts  and  well- 
considered  conclusions.  The  club  believes  that  facts 
without  opinions  are  useless,  and  that  opinions  with- 
out facts  are  impertinent  and  mischievous. 

"And  so  the  club  is  ransacking  the  census  returns, 
the  reports  of  the  State  House  officials,  the  county 
tax  digest,  the  grand  jury  presentments,  the  minutes 
of  the  church  associations,  the  section  on  Georgia  in 


306  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

the  school  library  and  every  other  available  source  of 
authoritative  information. 

"Most  of  the  students  are  country  bred  and  usually 
know  their  home  counties  thoroughly;  but  when 
they  study  the  drift  of  affairs  and  events  during  a 
ten-year  interval,  and  check  the  contrasts,  they  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  causes,  conditions  and  con- 
sequences within  small,  definite,  well-known  areas. 

"The  discoveries  challenge  interest  and  concern 
like  a  bugle  blast.  A  sense  of  civic  and  social  respon- 
sibility stirs  in  them.  They  hear  the  call  o  f  service  in 
the  countryside,  to  service  within  the  walls  of  their 
schoolroom  and  far  beyond  it.  All  of  these  young 
people  will  be  teachers,  but  few  of  them  will  be 
teachers  merely;  they  will  be  leaders  as  well,  in  all 
worthy  community  enterprises.  The  rising  tide  of 
patriotic  fever  and  fervor  in  the  Georgia  club  is  a 
large  asset  for  the  school  and  for  Georgia  in  the 
future.  Clear  thinking  in  economics  and  sociology  in 
our  schools  is  too  often  like  sunshine  in  winter — full 
of  light  and  freezing.  But  accurate,  definite  knowl- 
edge about  one's  own  home  and  people  is  tonic  and 
quickening  to  the  civic  senses.  It  is  full  of  life  and 
light.  It  is  a  concrete,  direct  approach  to  the  formal 
studies  of  economics  and  sociology  in  our  colleges 
and  universities." 

For  country  school-teachers,  who  want  to  prepare 
for  teaching  agriculture,  the  model  practise  schools 
and  practise  work  are  beneficial.  Many  states  main- 
tain practise  schools  in  connection  with  their  state 
normals,  but  this  work  may  be  done  also  in  the 


TRAINING   OF   TEACHERS  307 

county  training  schools  and  in  the  teachers'  training 
departments  in  the  high  schools  which  undertake  to 
train  teachers. 

There  are  available  for  the  rural  teachers  already 
employed  who  can  not  afford  to  quit  teaching  and 
who  want  to  prepare  themselves  for  teaching  in  agri- 
cultural schools,  special  courses  in  summer  schools, 
extension  courses  and  correspondence  courses.  Ohio 
has  organized  special  extension  courses  in  several 
counties  for  training  agricultural  teachers.  The 
schools  are  in  charge  of  instructors  from  the  exten- 
sion department  of  the  State  Agricultural  College 
and  the  funds  used  to  support  the  courses  are  re- 
ceived from  the  federal  government  under  an  act  of 
1907.  At  least  twenty-five  state  institutions  and  at 
least  five  private  schools  have  arranged  to  give  cor- 
respondence courses  in  agriculture. 

There  must  of  necessity  be  a  great  deal  of  experi- 
mentation in  the  training  of  teachers  by  high 
schools,  county  training  schools,  colleges  and  uni- 
versities for  vocational  teaching.  The  product  will 
not  be  uniformly  useful,  but  the  experimentation 
may  be  warranted  as  a  part  of  the  effort  to  work 
out  the  problem. 

It  is  probable  that  we  shall  have  less  trouble  in 
obtaining  an  adequate  supply  of  efficient  teachers  of 
agriculture  than  of  teachers  of  industrial  vocations 
and  the  commercial  pursuits.    But  it  seems  quite 


308  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

practical  that  high-school  students  who  desire  to 
become  industrial  teachers  may  gain  no  little  shop 
experience  by  working  part  time  while  they  are  pur- 
suing the  regular  high-school  course.  In  fact,  it  is 
wise  for  them  to  work  part  time  whether  they  ex- 
pect to  teach  or  not. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

HOW  SHALL  THE  OBLIGATION  BE  MET 

More  money  needed  when  education  becomes  universal — The 
historical  development  of  local  theory  of  education — The 
growth  of  state  supervision — State  aid — National  aid — Sys- 
tems of  aid  most  efficient  plan — National  importance  of  voca- 
tional education — Competitive  trade — Social  unrest — Agricul- 
tural development — New  burdens — Imminence  of  the  problem 
— States  and  communities  alone  can  not  meet  the  needs 
quickly  enough — Differences  of  financial  abilities — Team  play 
of  the  nation,  states  and  local  units  needed — The  proposal  be- 
fore Congress  for  national  aid. 

The  program  of  vocational  education  outlined  in 
the  previous  chapters  will  require  more  money  for 
the  public  schools.  From  one  to  two  years  will  be 
added  to  the  average  school  life  of  the  children  and 
a  complete  system  would  bring  at  least  four  million 
students  into  the  part-time  and  evening  schools.  Ex- 
tension work,  correspondence  courses  and  voca- 
tional guidance  and  vocational  libraries  will  require 
additional  money.  It  is  going  inevitably  to  cost  more 
to  support  public  education  when  education  becomes 
universal  than  it  does  now  when  more  than  ninety 
per  cent,  are  only  partially  educated.  This  cost  will 
not  be  in  proportion  to  the  number  added  to  the 
school  population,  but  it  will  nevertheless  be  a  con- 
siderable burden. 

309 


310  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Assuming  that  vocational  education  is  an  obliga- 
tion of  this  democratic  people — and  who  can  doubt 
it — how  shall  this  obligation  be  met?  Where  will 
the  money  come  from  to  train  men  in  the  hundreds 
of  vocations ;  to  prepare  a  new  kind  of  social  teacher 
for  the  task  of  training  men;  and  to  provide  the 
equipment  necessary  for  this  large  work? 

These  are  questions  of  first-rate  importance.  They 
are  fairly  up  to  the  American  people,  at  this  very 
moment  when  beginnings  are  being  made  to  meet 
the  obligation  which  rests  upon  them. 

By  an  historic  accident  the  schools  have  come  to 
be  looked  upon  as  the  concern  of  the  state  and  the 
local  units.  Indeed  many  go  so  far  as  to  declare  that 
the  schools  are  a  local  problem  solely.  Resistance 
has  frequently  been  made  even  to  state  interference 
or  support,  which  carries  with  it  inspection  in  educa- 
tional matters. 

The  national  government  can  have  no  direct  con- 
trol of  the  school  administration  because  the  federal 
power  is  a  delegated  power  and  education  is  not  one 
of  the  powers  delegated  to  it.  The  constitution  is 
silent  on  the  subject, — silent,  not  because  the  fram- 
ers  of  the  constitution  were  not  in  sympathy  with 
education,  but  because  public  education  was  at  that 
time  almost  unknown.  Most  of  the  earliest  state 
constitutions  likewise  ignored  the  subject  for  the 
same  reason.  There  were  no  free  schools  and  it  was 
not  considered  an  obligation  to  furnish  free  schools. 


THE    OBLIGATION  311 

An  advanced  step  was  that  in  Pennsylvania,  where 
it  was  declared  in  1790  that  the  state  ought  to  estab- 
lish schools  so  "that  the  poor  might  be  taught 
gratis." 

It  was  nearly  the  middle  of  the  last  century  when 
free  schools  began  to  develop.  They  came  slowly 
and  even  in  the  memory  of  men,  not  yet  old,  free 
education  was  narrowly  limited.  In  some  states  free 
schools  were  abolished  after  a  trial.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances the  elementary  schools  grew  up  in  the 
main  under  local  stimulus  and  control. 

The  result  of  this  local  development  was  that  edu- 
cation was  diffused  very  unevenly  in  each  state. 
Some  localities  provided  good  teachers,  ample  equip- 
ment, and  a  reasonably  long  school  term;  others 
made  no  move  for  public  education  whatever ;  while 
in  many  places  schools  were  so  poorly  equipped  and 
conducted  as  to  be  practically  useless. 

But  there  soon  grew  up  a  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  state  and  nation  of  their  duty  toward 
public  education.  It  was  recognized  that  a  nation  or 
state  part  ignorant  and  part  educated  could  not  en- 
dure on  solid  democratic  principles.  The  new  state 
constitutions  of  the  middle  of  the  last  century  de- 
clared for  the  general  establishment  of  free  schools 
and  the  general  diffusion  of  knowledge.  The  "local" 
theory  of  education  was  exploded  by  the  march  of 
events  and  the  state  assumed  its  duty  to  see  that  the 
citizens  of  every  community  should  have  adequate 


312  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

opportunities  for  education.  State  aid  was  given  to 
encourage  action  on  the  part  of  local  communities; 
the  weaker  districts  were  given  special  aid;  expert 
assistance  and  guidance  were  provided ;  close  super- 
vision was  finally  established  by  state  departments 
of  public  instruction  and  state  boards  of  education 
and,  lastly,  the  establishment  of  elementary  schools 
in  all  communities  was  required  and  attendance  of 
children  therein  made  compulsory. 

Coordinate  with  this  movement  for  state  aid  and 
supervision  of  education  came  the  recognition  by 
the  federal  government  of  the  plan  and  purpose  of 
education  in  our  national  life.  Not  being  permitted 
by  the  federal  constitution  to  take  an  active  part  in 
establishing  and  controlling  educational  systems,  the 
federal  government  has  contented  itself  with  grant- 
ing direct  aid  either  in  money  or  lands  to  be  used 
by  the  states  as  they  saw  fit.  First  and  last,  accord- 
ing to  Monroe's  Encyclopedia  of  Education,  these 
grants  for  the  common  schools  will  have  yielded  a 
total  income  of  five  hundred  and  ninety-nine  million 
dollars. 

The  famous  Morrill  Act  of  1862  granted  tracts  of 
land  to  the  states  for  vocational  education  in  agri- 
culture and  mechanic  arts.  This  was  supplemented 
in  1887  by  additional  grants  and  by  annual  grants 
for  agricultural  experiment  and  extension  work,  un- 
til the  total  amount  already  contributed  by  the  fed- 
eral government  amounts  to  more  than  two  hundred 


THE   OBLIGATION  313 

million  dollars.  By  the  Smith-Lever  Law,  passed  in 
1914,  the  further  sum  of  six  million  dollars  is  ap- 
propriated annually  for  agricultural  demonstration 
work  by  the  states. 

Thus  by  a  succession  of  events,  education  has  de- 
veloped from  a  matter  of  local  concern  which  com- 
munities could  provide  or  not  as  their  patriotism  or 
their  greed  dictated,  and  which  children  could  at- 
tend or  not  as  the  enlightenment  or  the  ignorance  of 
parents  permitted,  into  a  matter  of  state  and  na- 
tional care  and  solicitude — the  states  fulfilling  the 
requirement  written  or  implied  in  their  constitutions 
that  "knowledge  and  learning  generally  diffused 
throughout  a  community  being  essential  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  a  free  government,  it  shall  be  the  duty 
of  the  legislature  to  encourage  by  all  suitable  means, 
moral,  intellectual  and  agricultural  improvement,, ; 
and  the  nation  fulfilling  the  duty  laid  upon  it  by  its 
fundamental  law  "to  promote  the  general  welfare." 
,  In  all  the  development  of  state  and  national 
purposes  in  education,  the  theory  of  local  self-gov- 
ernment has  been  maintained  in  so  far  as  it  was  pos- 
sible under  the  necessities  for  the  diffusion  of 
knowledge.  The  local  units  have  built  their  schools, 
voted  their  taxes  and  controlled  the  operation  of  the 
schools.  The  state  has  merely  said  in  effect  to  the 
localities,  "You  must  provide  education  of  a  mini- 
mum grade.  Go  ahead,  build  and  maintain  your 
schools,  and  the  state  will  help  you  bear  the  bur- 


314  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

den."  Obviously  under  this  plan,  state  inspection 
and  supervision  was  necessary  in  order  to  make  cer- 
tain that  the  partnership  was  being  properly  con- 
ducted. The  national  grants  have  been  made  to  the 
states  with  little  but  the  moral  obligation  on  the 
states  to  use  the  money  according  to  the  wish  of  the 
donor. 

Cooperation  in  the  form  of  a  partnership  be- 
tween central  and  local  governments  is  the  acme  of 
efficiency.  Throughout  the  English-speaking  world 
it  has  been  employed  in  the  form  of  "grants  in  aid" 
with  splendid  results  in  many  fields  of  social  and 
economic  affairs.  Sidney  Webb1  says  of  "grants  in 
aid"  in  England  that  "They  furnish  the  only  practi- 
cable method  consistent  with  local  autonomy  of 
bringing  to  bear  upon  local  administration  the  wis- 
dom of  experience,  superiority  of  knowledge  and 
breadth  of  view  which,  as  compared  with  the  admin- 
istrators of  any  small  town,  a  central  executive  de- 
partment can  not  fail  to  acquire,  for  the  carrying 
into  effect  the  general  policy  which  parliament  has 
prescribed.  Without  in  the  least  believing  that  there 
exists  in  any  government  office  a  special  fund  of  ad- 
ministrative wisdom  or  that  the  inhabitants  of  the 
smallest  town  may  not  know  best  how  to  govern 
that  town,  there  are  usually  some  lines  of  policy  and 
some  directions  of  expenditure  which  in  the  com- 
mon judgment  of  the  community  are  better  than 


1  Webb,  Grants  in  Aid,  p.  21. 


THE    OBLIGATION  315 

others.  Yet  experience  shows  that  some  local  au- 
thorities will  at  all  times  be  backward  in  discarding 
the  worse  and  adopting  the  better  alternative  .  .  . 
Grants  in  aid  should  be  so  arranged  as  to  give  en- 
couragement to  expenditures  which  are  deemed  in 
the  national  interest,  desirable,  rather  than  expend- 
itures which  are  deemed  undesirable." 

Other  reasons  advanced  by  Webb  for  such  grants 
are  that  they  prevent  an  extreme  inequality  of  bur- 
den between  one  district  and  another ;  that  they  give 
weight  to  the  suggestions,  criticisms  and  instructions 
by  which  the  central  authority  seeks  to  secure 
greater  efficiency  and  economy  of  administration; 
and  they  provide  the  means  of  enforcing  on  all  lo- 
cal authorities  that  "national  minimum"  of  efficiency 
in  local  services  which  we  now  see  to  be  indispensa- 
ble in  the  national  interest. 

There  are  many  practical  considerations  which 
argue  for  local,  state  and  national  cooperation  in 
vocational  education  aside  from  the  efficiency  of  the 
method,  and  the  preservation  of  local  initiative  and 
self-government.  The  need  for  vocational  education 
is  a  national  one,  involving  our  future  success  as  a 
nation,  both  in  relation  to  foreign  countries  in  trade 
and  commerce  and  to  our  social  and  economic  prob- 
lems at  home.  In  the  future  struggles  for  commer- 
cial supremacy  in  the  world's  markets,  that  nation 
will  win,  and  will  deserve  to  win,  which  makes  the 
best  goods  at  the  lowest  price.     Dependence  upon 


316  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

supplies  of  raw  material  which  has  heretofore  given 
this  country  an  advantage  is  only  a  temporary  ad- 
vantage which  does  not  count  in  the  century-long 
commercial  struggles  before  us.  In  fact,  only  a  part 
of  a  century  will  be  needed  to  remove  the  advantage 
which  we  now  possess,  in  our  supplies  of  raw  ma- 
terials, unless  we  reform  our  wasteful  and  ignorant 
methods  of  mining,  lumbering  and  farming,  and  of 
utilizing  the  products  of  mine,  forest  and  field. 

We  can  not  depend  upon  a  few  industrial  leaders 
of  brilliance  to  keep  us  up  in  the  race.  To  be  -sure, 
we  have  managerial  skill  of  a  high  grade,  and  upon 
it  we  have  built  what  we  now  possess.  But  the  sup- 
ply of  such  men  is  limited  and  the  specialization  of 
industry  has  cut  off  the  principal  source  from  which 
the  most  efficient  have  come.  There  is  a  wide  gap 
between  the  men  in  the  management  and  the  men 
in  the  ranks.  A  few  men  in  the  factory  do  the  think- 
ing, while  thousands  automatically  work  on  and 
often  are  even  discouraged  from  thinking.  The 
combination  of  thought  and  work  is  reduced  to  a 
minimum.  Such  a  condition  may  be  temporarily 
successful,  but  is  disastrous  in  the  long  run,  and  that 
disaster  extends  to  the  commercial  life  of  the  na- 
tion. 

Industrial  efficiency  means  efficiency  all  along  the 
line.  Efficiency  means  the  ability  to  do  a  task  in  the 
very  best  manner  and  the  desire  to  do  harder  and 


more  important  tasks. 


Promotion  must,  in  some 


THE    OBLIGATION  317 

manner,  be  held  before  all  men  and  that  can  only  be 
done  by  wide-spread  training,  reaching  every  man 
in  the  ranks.  Germany  recognized  the  necessity  for 
universal  training  and  it  was  recently  her  proud 
boast  that  in  a  few  years  there  would  not  be  such  a 
thing  as  an  untrained  man  in  the  empire.  What 
that  would  have  meant  to  the  trade  of  nations  were 
it  not  for  untimely  war,  can  only  be  conjectured. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  unfaltering  advance  of  German 
trade  and  commerce  has  been  due  to  vocational  edu- 
cation. The  nation's  purpose  held  to  that  course  and 
planned  for  a  further  advance  by  promoting  educa- 
tional efficiency  through  every  grade  of  labor.  Our 
nation  must  learn  the  lesson  and  apply  the  method, 
if  any  solid,  permanent,  world  results  are  to  be  ac- 
complished in  our  commerce. 

It  is  imperative  that  the  nation  recognize  the  so- 
cial significance  of  vocational  education  in  industrial 
work  and  promote  such  education  as  a  means  of  fur- 
thering the  security  of  our  established  order.  Social 
unrest  pervades  the  land.  Everywhere  one  finds  evi- 
dence of  unsound  conditions  in  the  social  fabric.  It 
breaks  out  in  the  form  of  strikes ;  in  the  demand  for 
legislation  regarding  hours,  and  conditions  of  work; 
in  the  formation  of  labor  unions;  in  the  propaganda 
of  the  Socialist  or  the  demands  of  the  Industrial 
Workers  of  the  World. 

These  conditions  can  not  long  continue  without 
serious  consequences  to  the  national  welfare  and  the 


318  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

nation's  clear  duty  is  to  find  immediate  correction. 
One  of  the  most  potent  means  of  correction  is  certain 
to  be  found  in  vocational  education.  It  goes  to  the 
very  root  of  the  causes  of  discontent.  By  providing 
a  means  for  each  man  to  find  a  way  "out  and  up,"  it 
puts  the  divine  spark  of  ambition  into  men.  It  puts 
promotion  in  the  way  of  every  man  who  will  profit 
by  it,  and  thus  removes  the  one  chief  evil  against 
which  men  justly  complain.  It  opens  up  the  safety 
valves  through  which  the  righteous  discontent  of 
the  workers  may  escape  to  the  profit  of  the  man  and 
the  benefit  of  the  nation. 

The  national  importance  of  agricultural  education 
scarcely  needs  to  be  referred  to  here.  Agriculture  is 
the  principal  basic  industry  of  the  country  and  upon 
it  depends  the  prosperity  of  the  nation.  Markets 
rise  and  fall  upon  the  reports  of  crop  yield.  So 
closely  is  our  industrial  fabric  knit  with  agriculture 
that  captains  of  industry  and  great  financiers  wait 
with  anxiety  before  acting  to  get  the  first  official 
crop  predictions. 

It  is  the  nation's  purpose  to  foster  agriculture ;  to 
preserve  the  soil  and  to  build  up  a  countryside  which 
shall  be  a  solid  bulwark  against  social  decay.  The 
economic  profit  is  great  and  the  social  value  is  in- 
calculable. In  this  the  states  and  local  units  join 
heartily  and  effectively.  All  profit  by  the  coopera- 
tion and  all  should  pay  the  cost. 

The  task  of  education  in  these  new  fields  is  one 


THE   OBLIGATION  319 

of  analysis  and  cautious  advance.  We  need  to  know 
what  we  are  attempting  to  do  and  make  plans  on  the 
basis  of  ascertained  facts.  We  should  know  what 
knowledge  is  worth  while  and  the  "relative  value  of 
knowledges"  and  we  must  find  men  and  women  ca- 
pable of  imparting  to  learners  what  has  been  deter- 
mined to  be  of  most  worth.  Efficient  cooperation 
of  all  agencies  benefited  is  needed  to  stimulate  the 
production  of  a  new  kind  of  social  teacher  who  can 
study  intelligently  the  needs  of  industry,  agriculture, 
business  and  home  and  their  relation  to  the  broader 
needs  of  civic  life  and  who  upon  the  data  gathered 
from  such  study  may  build  school  courses  suited  to 
the  needs  of  all  workers  and  who  can  grasp  the  prob- 
lems presented  by  the  new  order  so  that  the.  move- 
ment for  vocational  education  may  press  steadily 
forward  without  being  diverted  from  its  real  pur- 
pose. 

What  has  been  said  of  the  nation's  duty  applies  in 
a  larger  way  to  the  individual  states.  The  competi- 
tion which  the  nation  enters  into  with  the  world  is, 
in  miniature,  engaged  in  by  the  states  with  each 
other.  Each  state  has  its  own  developments  to  sus- 
tain; its  special  industries  to  promote;  its  own  re- 
sources to  conserve  and  its  own  social  problems  to 
solve.  Some  of  these  can  be  left  to  the  local  units, 
some  to  the  nation.  The  state  must  work  them  out 
through  the  local  units  with  such  aid  as  the  federal 
government  may  grant.     Thus  the  promotion  of 


320  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

textile  manufacture  in  Massachusetts  in  competition 
with  that  of  the  South  is  a  problem  which  Massa- 
chusetts is  most  concerned  in  solving  but  upon  the 
right  solution  of  which  the  nation  has  an  interest. 
If  that  problem  is  solved  by  Massachusetts  through 
education  whereby  a  finer  and  ever  finer  grade  of 
textile  shall  be  the  product;  if  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts meet  the  competition  of  Georgia  by  learn- 
ing to  make  better  goods  and  leaving  the  coarser 
goods  for  Georgia's  development,  the  result  is  a  na- 
tional benefit  and  a  state  asset  and  of  great  local  im- 
portance to  all  cities  where  textiles  are  made.  The 
counter-action  of  any  competition,  whether  between 
states  or  nations,  is  to  be  found  in  the  development 
of  new  or  superior  products.  In  the  friendly  rivalry 
of  states  each  state  can  profit  greatly  by  the  develop- 
ment of  its  products  through  educated  skill. 

The  cities  and  towns  have  a  greater  interest  than 
the  state  or  nation  in  education  which  fits  their  in- 
dustries. Their  concern  is  immediate  and  pervad- 
ing. The  results  are  tangible.  They  can  be  seen 
in  the  direct  prosperity  of  the  community  and  its 
citizens.  In  the  nation  and  the  state  the  results  are 
merely  observable  in  the  aggregate ;  to  the  cities  and 
towns  it  means  concrete  betterment;  to  the  citizen 
it  means  efficiency,  prosperity,  contentment,  hope 
for  himself  and  his  children. 

The  conclusion  which  follows  from  these  state- 
ments is  obvious.    Who  shall  bear  the  burden?    The 


THE   OBLIGATION  321 

nation,  state  and  local  communities,  being  the  joint 
beneficiaries,  should  share  the  cost  with  the  co- 
operation if  not  the  financial  aid  of  the  industries 
more  directly  benefited.  The  obligation  rests  pe- 
culiarly upon  the  state  and  nation  to  point  the  way 
and  lend  inducements.  Study  of  the  problem  is 
needed  and  expert  assistance  must  be  provided. 
These,  the  states,  but  more  especially  the  nation,  are 
fitted  to  give.  The  obligation  rests  upon  the  local 
communities  thereafter  to  initiate  the  program,  to 
study  local  needs,  to  provide  the  schools  and  to  co- 
operate with  the  state  and  nation  in  their  support. 

But  there  are  other  considerations  more  loudly 
calling  for  unity  of  action  and  more  clearly  em- 
phasizing the  distribution  of  the  burden,  chief 
among  which  is  the  mobility  of  our  workers.  A 
man  may  be  born  in  New  York,  educated  for  a  trade 
in  Cincinnati,  and  spend  his  days  in  Chicago.  His 
vocation  may  call  him  into  many  states  in  a  single 
year,  and  perhaps  in  the  course  of  a  lifetime  he 
may  have  done  useful  work  in  every  part  of  the 
country. 

According  to  the  census  of  1910,  only  fifty-seven 
and  three-tenths  per  cent,  of  the  urban  population 
were  born  in  the  state  where  they  were  then  living. 
Even  the  rural  population  showed  that  only  seventy- 
four  and  five-tenths  per  cent,  were  natives  of  the 
state  in  which  they  were  then  living.  An  investiga- 
tion by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation  in  1913  dis- 


322  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

closed  that  in  seventy-eight  American  cities  only 
sixteen  per  cent,  of  the  fathers  of  the  22,027  boys 
thirteen  years  of  age  were  born  in  the  city  where 
they  were  then  living.  Of  the  boys  themselves,  only 
fifty-eight  per  cent,  were  natives  of  the  city  where 
they  were  attending  school. 

The  mobility  of  industrial  labor,  moreover,  seems 
to  be  marked  in  those  industries  which  are  common 
to  many  communities  as  well  as  to  those  which  are 
localized  in  a  few  industrial  centers. 

The  mobility  of  population  brings  also  another 
inequitable  distribution  of  burden  through  the  mass- 
ing of  unskilled  native  and  immigrant  labor  in  a 
few  industrial  centers.  No  one  would  argue,  for 
instance,  that  it  is  just  for  the  cities  of  New  York, 
Chicago  and  Boston  to  bear  the  entire  burden  of 
educating  the  foreign  immigrants  whom  the  laws 
of  the  country  permit  to  enter  but  fail  properly  to 
distribute.  The  inequitable  distribution  of  burden 
from  all  of  these  causes  is  the  most  powerful  argu- 
ment adduced  in  favor  of  the  distribution  of  burden 
among  the  localities,  states  and  nation — the  joint 
beneficiaries. 

A  second  consideration  of  great  importance  lies 
in  the  unequal  abilities  of  the  states  and  the  local 
units  to  provide  the  kind  of  education  which  the 
national  purpose  demands.  The  Commission  on 
Federal  Vocational  Education  estimated  the  wealth 
per   capita   of   school   population   with   significant 


THE   OBLIGATION  323 

effect.  Their  estimates  show  that  the  average 
wealth  for  the  whole  country  per  capita  is  about 
five  thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy-four  dollars. 
In  ten  states  the  average  exceeds  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars. In  five  other  states  the  average  is  less  than 
one  thousand  nine  hundred  dollars.  It  is  apparent 
that  the  resources  of  some  are  relatively  totally  in- 
adequate. The  commission  makes  the  following 
statement : 

"Assuming  that  the  people  of  the  several  states 
are  equally  disposed  to  contribute  to  the  support  of 
their  schools  in  proportion  to  their  means,  there  will 
be  expended  per  capita  of  school  population  in  Ne- 
vada nearly  ten  times  the  amount  available  in 
Georgia  or  Alabama;  in  California  approximately 
five  times  as  much  as  is  available  in  Arkansas,  Flor- 
ida, Kentucky,  Louisiana,  Oklahoma,  Tennessee, 
Texas  or  Virginia;  and  approximately  twice  as 
much  as  is  available  in  Delaware,  Indiana,  Maine, 
Maryland,  Missouri,  South  Dakota,  Utah,  Vermont, 
Washington  or  Wisconsin." 

The  ability  of  the  states  may  roughly  be  estimated 
upon  the  present  state  of  indebtedness  which  varies 
from  three  cents  per  capita  in  Iowa  to  $10.46  in 
Virginia,  $13.02  in  Arizona  and  $22.78  in  Massa- 
chusetts. Thirteen  states  average  less  than  $1  per 
capita,  while  twelve  states  exceed  $6  per  capita. 

A  similar  story  can  be  told  of  the  relative  ability 
of  the  cities,  towns  and  rural  districts  to  meet  singly 


324  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

and  alone  the  burdens  which  increased  educational 
facilities  put  upon  them. 

To  meet  the  nation-wide  needs  for  vocational 
education;  to  distribute  the  burdens  equitably 
among  the  beneficiaries;  and  to  promote  efficiency 
in  the  expenditure  of  money  for  vocational  educa- 
tion through  team-play  of  nation,  state  and  local 
units,  there  is  pending  before  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  a  bill  providing  for  national  aid  for 
.  VtwVocational  education  in  agriculture,  trades  and  indus- 

^v  °  tries  and  for  the  training  of  teachers  of  vocational 

J        subjects. 

By  the  terms  of  the  bill,  when  it  is  in  full  force, 
the  sum  of  seven  million  dollars  will  be  appropri- 
ated annually,  three  millions  of  which  will  go  to 
agriculture,  three  millions  to  trade  and  industries, 
and  one  million  to  the  training  of  teachers  of  voca- 
tional subjects.  An  additional  appropriation  of  two 
hundred  thousand  dollars  annually  is  made  to  study 
processes  of  industry,  commerce,  agriculture  and 
the  home,  in  order  to  guide  the  teaching  process. 
The  bill  provides  that  the  appropriation  shall  be 
spent  under  the  direction  of  state  boards  provided 
for  by  the  state  legislatures  upon  plans  submitted 
by  such  boards  and  approved  by  the  national  board 
for  vocational  education  consisting  of  fiy„e  members 
of  the  cabinet,  namely,  the  secretary  of  agriculture, 
secretary  of  the  interior,  secretary  of  labor,  secre- 
tary of  commerce,  and  the  postmaster-general. 


THE   OBLIGATION  325 


The  commissioner  of  education  is  to  be  the  execu- 
tive officer  of  this  board,  and  under  his  direction  the 
work  will  be  carried  out. 

Under  this  bill,  if  enacted,  the  states  will  initiate 
their  plans  for  vocational  education  suited  to  their 
particular  circumstances.  These  plans,  when  ap- 
proved by  the  national  board,  will  constitute  a  work- 
ing agreement  between  the  states  and  the  federal 
government  in  the  nature  of  a  contract  binding  as 
long  as  the  conditions  are  observed  on  both  sides. 
The  whole  initiative  is  left  with  the  states  and  local 
communities,  the  federal  government  giving  aid 
only  for  approved  kinds  of  vocational  education. 
We  have  thus  the  preservation  of  local  initiative; 
the  distribution  of  burden;  and  the  means  to  pro- 
mote the  efficiency  of  the  kind  of  education  desired. 
The  nation  pays  part  of  the  cost,  and  this  forms  the 
dynamic  force  stirring  states  and  local  units  to  ac- 
tion. The  nation  studies  the  problem,  gives  the 
benefits  of  its  studies  freely  and  encourages  local 
action  without  the  element  of  compulsory  control 
by  the  nation,  which,  in  our  theory  of  government, 
would  be  objectionable. 

The  European  war  has  directly  emphasized  the 
need  for  action.  We  have  been  thrown  back  upon 
our  own  resources  and  at  the  same  time  we  have 
been  called  upon  to  lead  the  industrial  and  commer- 
cial world.  We  need  to  train  our  workers  to  meet 
the  new  demands.     We  need  research  bureaus  to 


326  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

guide  industry  and  commerce  and  effective  exten- 
sion work  to  disseminate  essential  knowledge  wher- 
ever it  is  needed.  We  can  not  well  delay  without 
the  surrender  of  world-wide  opportunities. 

National  aid  is  the  means  of  mobilizing  for  action 
the  forces  working  for  vocational  education.  It  is 
a  means  of  attacking  a  problem  too  vast  for  the 
states,  working  independently.  All  that  has  been 
done  in  vocational  education  is  as  nothing  compared 
with  that  which  is  yet  to  be  begun.  The  need  for 
vocational  education  increases  faster  than  the  facili- 
ties for  providing  it.  Team  play  on  the  part  of  the 
nation,  states  and  local  units  such  as  that  provided 
in  the  bill,  is  urgently  necessary  if  we  are  to  ad- 
vance the  national  welfare. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

WORK   AND   CULTURE 

What  is  culture? — The  medieval  conception  of  culture— Intro- 
duction of  manual  training  and  of  the  occupational  interest 
into  the  curriculum — The  social  difference  in  vocations  and 
the  explanation — Culture  closely  related  to  thorough  and 
carefully-planned  methods  of  doing  work — Art  and  artisans 
— Homely  evidences  of  culture — Economic  phases  of  culture 
—Erroneous  notions  of  culture — Culture  for  our  working 
hours  —  Universal  education  wholly  unrealized  —  Education 
must  dovetail  into  the  life-work  of  boys  and  girls. 

Approximately  one  hundred  million  people 
come  within  the  range  of  the  American  system  of 
education.  Millions  more  will  come  under  this  in- 
fluence. A  few  realize  their  maximum  potentialities 
as  citizens  of  the  republic,  as  workers  in  the  fields, 
the  home,  the  marts  of  trade.  An  almost  unbeliev- 
able majority  of  our  people  never  rise  above  the 
plane  of  superficial  thinking  and  indifferent  effort. 
Too  many  of  us  die  property  less  because  we  put  off 
saving  pennies  until  we  are  able  to  save  dollars.  Too 
many  of  us  fail  to  attain  a  higher  state  of  culture 
because  we  are  unwilling  to  make  modest  begin- 
nings. 

Vocational  education  recognizes  this  current 
human  weakness  and  undertakes  to  forestall  its  un- 

327 


328  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

happy  consequences  by  careful  scientific  education 
for  each  boy  and  girl  in  accordance  with  individual 
capacity,  personal  talents,  determinate  ability. 
Education  for  a  calling  need  by  no  means  be  one- 
sided or  devoid  of  general  value  and  is,  as  Doctor 
Kerschensteiner  says,1  for  most  men,  and  espe- 
cially for  workers  in  industries,  trades  and  traffic, 
well  nigh  the  only  way  to  reach  a  higher  stage  of 
culture.  What  we  want  in  this  country  is  not 
greater  culture  so  much  as  wider  culture.  It  is  the 
dissemination  of  culture  which  must  be  brought 
about.  We  must  universalize  it,  not  forgetting  that 
the  man  who  does  an  humble  task  is  quite  as  sus- 
ceptible to  culture  as  the  man  who  performs  a  public 
service,  even  though  in  a  lesser  degree. 
,  Culture,  in  its  broadest  aspects,  means  the  su- 
preme realization  by  all  the  people,  taken  individu- 
ally, of  their  potential  strength  and  power.  It  means 
wider  intelligence  and  greater  personal  skill.  It  is 
/a  program  for  no  less  than  one  hundred  per  cent,  of 
our  people.  "Fortunately,"  says  David  Snedden,2 
"we  no  longer  hold  the  older  notion  that  culture  is 
inseparable  from  certain  specialized  forms  of  appre- 
ciation, such  as  ability  to  read  Greek,  speak  French, 
recite  sonnets,  or  discuss  the  latest  fiction,  and  we 
are   slowly  learning  to   conceive  it  as   something 


1  Fundamental  Principles  of  Continuation  Schools,  an  ad- 
dress delivered  under  the  auspices  of  the  National  Society  for 
the  Promotion  of  Industrial  Education. 

3  Problems  of  Educational  Readjustment,  p.  73. 


WORK    AND    CULTURE  329 

v  deeper  than  the  mere  possession  of  etiquette  and  a 
set  of  conventions." 

The  industrial  revolution  has  done  its  part  to 
break  up  the  medieval  hierarchy  of  learning.  The 
invention  of  the  printing  press,  the  improved  meth- 
ods of  communication  and  means  of  travel,  the 
growing  scope  of  the  division  of  labor  from  the 
confines  of  the  community  on  the  outpost  of  civiliza- 
tion to  the  world-wide  barter  and  sale  have  facili- 
tated somewhat  the  advent  of  an  intellectual  democ- 
racy. Yet  the  medieval  conception  of  intelligence 
still  persists.  Schools  deal  with  mere  symbols  of 
knowledge,  and  learning  is  abstract,  intangible,  un- 
real and  largely  devoid  of  utilitarian  significance. 
While  appearing  to  ignore  any  consideration  of 
their  social  responsibility,  the  schools  have  likewise 
failed  to  sustain  the  interest  of  the  individual 
learner.  The  commonest  reason  given  for  the  in- 
troduction of  manual  training  and  domestic  science 
into  the  curriculum  was,  as  John  Dewey  says,3  to  en- 
gage "the  full  spontaneous  interest  and  attention  of 
the  children" ;  to  keep  them  "alert  and  active  instead 
of  passive  and  receptive" ;  to  make  them  "more  use- 
ful, more  capable  and  hence  more  inclined  to  be 
helpful  at  home" ;  to  prepare  them  "to  some  extent 
for  the  practical  duties  of  later  life." 

It  might  be  explained  how  invention  and  enter- 
prise have  changed  the  face  of  the  industrial  map 

*  School  and  Society,  p.  26. 


330  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

and  how  the  processes  of  industry,  once  the  proxi- 
mate interests  of  the  child's  life,  are  now  remote, 
inaccessible  and  obscure.  The  period  of  primary 
production  in  the  home  is  gone  never  to  return. 
Manual  training  and  domestic  science  may  be  re- 
garded either  as  successful  experiments  that  changed 
somewhat  the  form  of  a  system  without  affecting 
its  content,  or  as  preliminary  steps  to  the  complete 
transformation  of  the  educational  system  by  intro- 
ducing into  it  the  occupational  interest.  By  and 
through  the  transformation,  as  Dewey  says,4  the 
entire  spirit  of  the  school  is  to  be  renewed.  Thus 
the  school  "has  a  chance  to  affiliate  itself  with  life, 
to  become  the  child's  habitat,  where  he  learns 
through  directed  living,  instead  of  being  only  a 
place  to  learn  lessons  having  an  abstract  and  remote 
reference  to^ome  possible  living  to  be  done  in  the 
future.  It  gets  a  chance  to  be  a  miniature  com- 
munity, an  embryonic  society.  This  is  the  funda- 
mental fact,  and  from  this  arise  continuous  and 
orderly  courses  of  instruction." 

While  Dewey's  arraignment  of  the  present  sys- 
tem seems  harsh  enough  when  he  comments  upon 
the  isolation  of  the  school  from  real  life,  as,  for 
instance,  "when  the  child  gets  into  the  schoolroom 
he  has  to  put  out  of  his  mind  a  large  part  of  the 
ideas,  interests  and  activities  that  predominate  in 
his  home  and  neighborhood" ;  or  when  he  pleads  for 


*  The  School  and  Society,  p.  31. 


WORK    AND    CULTURE  331 

a  school  that  will  be  "active  with  types  of  occupa- 
tions that  reflect  the  life  of  the  larger  society"; 
nevertheless  he  appears  to  avoid  the  natural  se- 
quence of  his  own  reasoning  and  to  miss  altogether 
the  point  to  vocational  education  when  he  remarks 
in  another  place,5  "it  is  not  meant  that  the  school 
is  to  prepare  the  child  for  any  particular  business, 
but  that  there  should  be  a  natural  connection  of  the 
every-day  life  of  the  child  with  the  business  environ- 
ment about  him."  On  the  contrary,  this  is  just 
what  vocational  education  means,  if  it  means  any- 
thing. Moreover,  it  is  precisely  what  an  "organic 
connection  between  the  school  and  business  life" 
means,  if  it  means  anything. 

The  trouble  with  what  Dewey  says,  incidentally, 
is  that  it  was  written  before  the  full  significance  of 
manual  training  and  domestic  science  was  under- 
stood in  this  country,  but  fundamentally  that  even 
he  is  not  able  wholly  to  depart  from  the  theory  that 
education,  learning  or  knowledge  is  the  final  aim  and 
ambition  of  man,  while  food,  shelter  and  clothing 
are  mere  incidents  to  human  existence.  Manual 
training  and  domestic  science  were  to  be  cast  upon 
the  water  like  the  Scriptural  bread  with  the  hope  that 
somehow,  since  there  is  comparatively  little  com- 
pensation and  small  response  from  present  intellec- 
tual exercises  in  the  school,  manual  training  and 
domestic  science  would  return  forthwith  baited  with 


The  School  and  Society,  p.  90. 


332  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

eager  learners.  Or,  perhaps,  manual  training  was 
never  meant  to  be  more  than  a  prop,  and  was  ex- 
pected to  fulfill  its  mission  as  such ;  albeit,  there  has 
always  been  a  more  obvious  reason  for  driving  a 
nail  straight  than  that  of  intellectual  diversion  or 
merely  keeping  a  large  percentage  of  the  boys  in 
school. 

We  can  agree  with  Dewey,  however,  that  "occu- 
pations in  the  school  shall  not  be  mere  practical  de- 
vices or  modes  of  routine  employment,  the  gaining 
of  better  technical  skill  as  cooks,  seamstresses,  or 
carpenters,  but  active  centers  of  scientific  insight 
into  natural  materials  and  processes,  points  of  de- 
parture whence  children  shall  be  led  out  into  a  reali- 
zation of  the  historic  development  of  man."  If 
vocational  education  can  attain  this  aim  in  purpose 
and  method,  and  it  can  not  afford  to  stop  short  of 
it,  then  we  shall  have  combined  the  two  most  im- 
portant ideals  in  education,  the  cultural  and  the 
utilitarian.  It  is  not  merely  that  carpentry  and 
medicine  are  so  vastly  different  in  content  that  we 
call  one  manual  labor  and  the  other  a  learned  pro- 
fession. It  is  not  merely  that  the  carpenter  works 
with  his  hands  and  the  physician  may  find  such  un- 
necessary. It  is  because  education  has  devised  a 
more  or  less  scientific  approach  to  medicine  and  has 
failed  to  do  so  in  the  case  of  carpentry. 

"The  man  that  builds  my  house,  shall  he  be 
merely  a  sawer  off  of  boards  and  a  nailer  on  of 


WORK   AND    CULTURE  333 

shingles  or  shall  he  have  and  feel  an  intelligent 
sympathy  with  its  architectural  plan?"  asks  Doctor 
Davenport.6  "If  he  have  that  sympathy  he  will  feel 
it  as  he  works,  and  he  will  unconsciously  put  it  into 
his  works,  and  we  shall  have  the  plan  fully  executed 
and  the  house  will  become  a  habitation  full  of  hu- 
man thought  in  its  execution  as  well  as  in  its  design. 
If  he  does  not  feel  that  sympathy  with  the  ideal  of 
the  architect,  he  can  not  put  the  best  into  its  execu- 
tion and  the  result  will  give  the  impression  of  an 
ideal  badly  realized  and  badly  executed.  The  com- 
mon man  may  not  be  able  to  originate  and  create, 
but  if  he  is  properly  educated  he  will  feel  the  artistic 
thrill  in  execution  and  both  he  and  his  work  will  be 
the  better  for  it.    This,  too,  is  culture." 

Assuredly,  it  is  culture,  and  culture  which  is 
available  to  every  man,  high  or  low,  rich  or  poor.  It 
is  the  culture  of  effort,  the  culture  of  efficient  service. 
It  is  quite  as  accessible  to  the  blacksmith  as  to  the 
lawyer;  to  the  farmer  as  to  the  teacher  of  Greek; 
to  the  toiling  housewife  as  to  the  painter  of  beauti- 
ful pictures.  In  any  case,  the  standard  is  not  the 
possession  merely  of  knowledge,  inspiration  and  in- 
sight, but  the  use  of  knowledge,  action  based  on 
inspiration  and  creation  drawn  from  insight.  "I 
can  not  see  much  culture  in  mere  ravings  upon  the 
achievements  of  others  or  even  in  meditation  upon 
lofty  thoughts  and  purposes  unless,"  says  Daven- 


eE.  Davenport,  Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture  and 
Director  of  the  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  University 
of  Illinois :  Education  for  Efficiency,  p.  95. 


334  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

port,7  "that  meditation  leads  to  action."  So  with 
the  carpenter,  the  blacksmith,  the  farmer,  the  house- 
wife, the  test  is  the  same  that  we  must  apply  to  the 
practise  of  medicine  or  law,  the  teaching  of  Greek 
and  the  finish  of  an  oil  painting.  Judged  by  this 
standard,  we  must  not  be  surprised  if  teaching  Greek 
is  dwarfed  by  comparison  with  ironing  dainty  linen 
or  nailing  on  a  horseshoe  with  consummate  skill.  As 
Dewey  points  out  so  aptly,8  "genuine  art  grows  out 
of  the  work  of  the  artisan"  and  "the  art  of  Renais- 
sance was  great  because  it  grew  out  of  the  manual 
arts  of  life.  It  did  not  spring  up  in  a  separate  atmos- 
phere, however  ideal,  but  carried  on  to  their  spiritual 
meaning  processes  found  in  homely  and  every-day 
forms  of  life.  The  school  should  observe  this 
relationship.  The  merely  artisan  side  is  narrow, 
but  the  mere  art,  taken  by  itself,  and  grafted  on 
from  without  tends  to  become  forced,  empty,  senti- 
mental." 

Consider  the  beautiful  rugs  for  which  we  are 
willing  to  pay  such  fabulous  prices !  Are  they  not 
works  of  art?  Or  the  exquisite  tapestries  which 
women  with  a  sense  of  the  beautiful  are  so  eager  to 
possess?  Are  they  not  also  the  products  of  minds 
fired  with  imagination  as  well  as  hands  skilled  with 
the  suppleness  of  execution?  Or  a  bit  of  dainty  em- 
broidery or  lace  ?    We  are  with  one  accord  ready  to 


7  Education  for  Efficiency,  p.  94. 

8  School  and  Society,  p.  103. 


WORK   AND    CULTURE  335 

recognize  back  of  these  things  a  kind  of  culture  for 
which  we  gladly  pay  a  premium.  Yet  no  rug  of 
Oriental  design  and  workmanship,  no  tapestry  of  a 
departed  century,  no  embroidery  or  lace  of  fanciful 
workmanship  has  been  evolved  as  a  mere  object 
of  beautiful  and  artistic  creation.  The  fundamental 
idea  back  of  their  creation  was  service.  Is  any  one 
who  loves  horses,  especially  harness  horses,  and  who 
understands  the  importance  of  a  properly  balanced 
shoe  ready  to  say  that  the  nailing  on  of  that  shoe 
consists  merely  in  driving  nails  through  holes  in  a 
curved  iron  bar  made  by  machinery?  The  stable 
boy  would  answer  this  question  with  a  significant 
grin,  yet  he  probably  would  fail  if  asked  to  analyze 
the  cultured  possibilities  in  a  blacksmith's  training. 
Many  things  have  combined  to  disclose  to  the  sa- 
vant the  cultural  opportunities  in  training  for  the 
farm.  The  clodhopper  is  a  disappearing  inhabitant 
of  the  country  and  in  his  place  we  have,  here  and 
there,  the  young  man  who,  having  dreamed  dreams 
and  seen  visions,  is  realizing  them  on  the  farm.  He 
takes  charge  of  the  old  homestead,  perhaps,  and  in 
a  few  years  witness  the  transformation!  If  he  is 
truly  awake  to  his  opportunities  and  at  the  same 
time  aware  of  his  limitations,  he  will  be  able  with 
a  comparatively  small  expenditure  of  capital,  to 
transform  the  appearance  of  the  home  and  its  sur- 
roundings. Grass  and  trees  cost  little  effort  and 
practically  no  money.    Graveled  driveways  and  paint 


336  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

are  economies  at  whatever  cost,  but  they  can  be 
added  with  little  outlay  except  effort  expended  at 
odd  times.  Fences,  naturally,  must  be  kept  in  re- 
pair, else  a  cow  may  wander  off  in  the  corn,  foun- 
der, and  lose  the  cost  of  a  well-built  fence.  Fence 
rows  will  be  kept  clean  of  weeds  since  it  is  cheaper 
to  cut  weeds  in  fence  rows  than  contend  with  them 
in  hills  of  growing  corn  and  in  clover.  Obvious  as 
the  truth  of  these  statements  is,  how  many  farmers 
in  a  given  township  plant  trees  with  any  regular- 
ity, keep  their  driveways  graveled,  their  buildings 
painted,  fences  repaired  and  fence  rows  clear  of 
weeds?  The  doing  of  these  things  is  by  no  means 
a  proof  of  culture,  but  it  is  very  likely  to  be  an  evi- 
dence of  it.  Certainly  the  external  evidences  of 
good  farming  are  clearly  indicative  that  the  proc- 
esses are  thorough,  that  they  have  been  thought- 
fully considered  and  carefully  planned. 

This  also  is  culture — the  capacity  for  full  and 
faithful  performance,  for  efficient  and  masterful 
service.  Back  of  it  all  is  not  merely  training  for 
routine  precision  and  mechanically  perfect  execu- 
tion, but  the  breath  of  life  itself,  the  thought,  indi- 
viduality, originality  of  the  doer.  Incidentally,  this 
personal  touch,  this  originality  is  the  secret,  if  it  may 
longer  be  considered  a  secret,  of  the  Germanic  pre- 
ponderance in  world  markets.  German  tradesmen, 
and  this  means  Germans  who  have  anything  what- 
ever to  do  with  commerce,  have  not  been  routineers. 


WORK   AND   CULTURE  337 

On  the  contrary,  they  have  been  highly  adaptable, 
pliant,  eager  to  please  and  certain  of  their  ability 
to  please.  Education  has  made  them  both  capable 
and  confident.  Not  the  education  which  acquaints 
people  with  obsolete  processes  and  dead  languages, 
but  vocational  education  which,  knowing  the  his- 
torical background  of  commerce  and  industry,  looks 
to  the  future  and  for  the  present,  measured  by 
standards  extant,~makes  men  and  women  efficient. 

The  economic  significance  of  the  culture  which 
implies  thorough  mastery  of  individual  work  is  lit- 
tle realized  in  this  country.  Yet  culture  is  not  want- 
ing in  economic  aspects ;  at  least  the  primary  stages 
of  culture.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  back- 
ground of  the  Renaissance  was  perfection  in 
manual  arts,  the  crating  of  a  case  of  fruit,  without 
losing  its  immediate  commercial  purpose,  takes  on  a 
new  and  higher  meaning,  a  finer  appreciation  for 
small  things.  The  farmers  of  this  country  have 
failed  time  and  again  to  gain  any  foothold  in  city 
markets  merely  because  they  do  not  understand  the 
importance  of  proper  grading  and  packing,  or  be- 
cause they  have  not  learned  the  art  of  making  the 
products  of  orchard  and  garden  look  attractive  to  the 
customer  in  the  city  or  the  middleman  who  must  sell 
to  the  city  buyer.  Complaints  against  discriminations 
by  the  middleman  avail  quite  as  little  as  the  efforts  of 
the  American  manufacturer  to  unload  a  surplus  de- 
signed for  domestic  consumption  on  a  market,  not 


338  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

only  foreign  geographically,  but  foreign  to  our  proc- 
esses and  our  methods.  Any  culture  that  is  very 
much  worth  while,  any  culture  which  is  more  than 
a  superficial  and  wasting  polish  must  be  founded 
on  economic  considerations  and  depend  for  its  ulti- 
mate realization  on  a  superiority  of  technical  skill. 
Otherwise  any  man  learned  in  the  law  might  con- 
vert his  legal  imagination,  by  merely  willing  it,  to 
the  terms  of  angles,  domes  and  spires  and  design  a 
beautiful  cathedral.  Our  sense  of  the  practical,  how- 
ever, has  established  the  rule  that  architects  not  only 
design  but  they  supervise  construction  and  see  to 
it  that  the  plans  and  specifications  they  have  drawn 
up  are  carried  out.  Spring  poetry  is  an  annual 
scourge  somewhat  because  our  spring  poets  do  not 
understand  the  technique  of  metrical  construction. 
Of  course  not  everybody  who  knows  the  technique 
of  poetry  can  write  great  epics,  but  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  any  one  could  produce  an  epic  without  know- 
ing anything  about  the  form  of  epics. 

We  have  in  this  country  an  altogether  erroneous 
notion  of  what  culture  means,  of  what  it  consists. 
We  have  been  accustomed  to  think  of  it  as  some- 
thing apart  from  effort.  Perhaps  the  commonest 
conception  is  that  of  a  wide  learning  in  and  broad 
knowledge  of  things  which  have  no  possible  connec- 
tion with  one's  vocation.  We  therefore  have  sought 
to  divorce  culture  from  the  vocational,  the  material, 
the   economic.     Culture   means   more   than   being 


WORK   AND    CULTURE  339 

able  to  gaze  with  delight  and  appreciation  upon 
the  tints  and  colors  over  which  some  old  master 
toiled  with  the  genius  of  inspiration.  This  ca- 
pacity is  eminently  worthy,  but  it  not  only  is  far  out 
of  reach  of  the  multitude,  it  is  at  best  merely  an 
incident  of  culture.  The  masses  of  the  people  have 
little  or  no  opportunity  to  visit  the  great  art  gal- 
leries of  this  country,  much  less  those  of  Europe. 
Moreover,  very  few  of  us  can  be  expected  to  gather 
more  than  a  veneer  of  culture  in  gazing  at  mere  pic- 
tures, for  it  is  certain  we  can  not  afford  rare  works 
of  art  in  our  own  homes.  Our  artistic  education, 
for  instance,  may  as  well  begin  with  the  selection 
of  pretty  and  inexpensive  prints  which  we  really  can 
afford  to  own.  Culture  means  more  than  philo- 
sophical whims  and  impractical  visionary  obsessions ; 
more  than-the  caprices  of  eccentric  temperaments. 
These  are  quite  as  likely  to  be  delusions  of 
the  egotist,  vagaries  of  the  drone  or  the  contemp- 
tuous cynicism  of  the  snob  as  signs  of  culture.  We 
have  no  very  great  need  for  this  species  of  culture, 
but  we  do  have  a  most  pressing  need  for  culture  that 
is  grounded  on  the  economic  independence  of  the 
individual. 

While  this  volume  undertakes  to  maintain  that 
no  work  is  wanting  in  cultural  aspects  and  that  the 
spiritual  insight  of  a  first-class  carpenter  or  builder 
is  culture  quite  as  much  as  the  information  or  wis- 
dom of  the  poet,  it  would  avoid  any  apparent  pur- 


340  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

pose  to  minimize  the  so-called  cultural  subjects  in 
industrial,  agricultural,  commercial,  or  home  edu- 
cation. The  present-day  training  given  in  the  cor- 
respondence school  or  the  private  business  college  is 
not  only  inadequate,  but  faulty.  The  young  man 
who  has  no  greater  equipment  for  a  business  career 
than  what  he  has  got  in  the  average  business  col- 
lege is  in  a  sad  plight.  He  is  headed  straight  for 
a  blind  alley  from  which  he  is  very  likely  never  to 
emerge.  Now  that  we  have  gone  to  the  extreme 
with  learning  for  the  sake  of  "mental  discipline" 
or  learning  which  "might  come  in  handy  some  time/' 
we  do  not  want  to  plunge  into  the  other  extreme  and 
reduce  education  wholly  and  strictly  to  the  mechan- 
ical plane. 

Doctor  Davenport9  is  right  when  he  says,  "I  would 
teacl?  to  all  classes,  of  people  all  forms  of  human 
knowledge  both  those  that  lead  to  immediate  re- 
sults and  those  that  appeal  strongly  to  the  intellect, 
regardless  of  professional  ends,"  except  that  the 
broad  training  which  should  accompany  a  voca- 
tional course  is  quite  as  likely  to  appeal  to  the 
intellect  as  the  same  training  minus  a  vocational  re- 
lationship and  to  possess  the  additional  value  of  lead- 
ing directly  to  results.  Davenport  seems  not  to  have 
grasped,  however,  the  complete  significance  of  voca- 
tional education  as  a  new  avenue  to  culture,  for  he 
would  set  industrial  training  over  against  culture  as 


9  Education  for  Efficiency,  p.  91. 


WORK   AND    CULTURE  341 

though  they  are  somehow  opposed  to  each  other. 
The  culture  which  he  proposes  to  open  to  the  vision 
of  the  industrial  people  is  a  culture  for  their  leisure 
hours.10  There  is  a  flavor  of  condescension,  a  smack 
of  conceit  and  an  admission  that  seems  like  unsolic- 
ited or  mock  charity  when,  after  proposing  culture 
for  the  leisure  hours  of  the  working  people,  he  ex- 
plains that  "there  is  nothing  about  labor  or  even 
about  common  things  that  makes  impossible  the 
loftiest  intellectual  achievements."  What  we  want 
for  the  working  people  is  not  a  culture  for  their 
leisure  hours,  but  a  culture  for  their  working  hours, 
a  culture  that  dominates  every  thought,  word  and 
deed  as  well  after  the  morning  whistle  blows  as 
after  the  blast  at  six  p.  m. 

Notwithstanding  our  boastings  as  regards  our 
system  of  free  and  universal  education,  we  ought  to 
know  enough  to  know  that  it  is  neither  free  nor 
universal.  Is  education  free  when  lads  of  ten  and 
twelve  quit  school  because  of  economic  necessity? 
Is  education  free  when  ambitious  young  men  who 
want  to  follow  a  profession  which  requires  further 
study  are  compelled  to  leave  off  their  education  at 
the  high  school?  Certainly  institutions  of  higher 
learning  have  their  doors  open,  but  they  are  just 
beyond  an  unbridged  precipice.  Is  education  uni- 
versal when  it  merely  sows  seeds  of  discontent  in 
the  hearts  of  young  men  who  must  struggle  for  their 


Ibid.,  p.  91. 


342  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

daily  bread ;  when  it  creates  an  appetite  without  fur- 
nishing any  means  to  gratify  it  ?  Not  that  we  would 
mollify  much  this  same  discontent.  We  are  not  so 
overjoyed  with  our  industrial  system  that  we  want 
to  bend  further  the  backs  of  unborn  children  in  ab- 
ject submission  to  it.  We  want  no  recruiting  sta- 
tions for  strikebreakers  established  on  property 
owned  by  the  state  and  set  apart  for  educational 
purposes.  We  want,  as  one  of  the  beginnings  of 
vocational  education,  certain  industries  put  without 
the  pale  of  public  recognition  and  we  want  the  rea- 
sons frankly  stated.  We  want  to  see  young  men 
trained  away  from  certain  industries  as  well  as  for 
certain  industries.  No  very  valid  argument  can  be 
made  against  vocational  education  merely  because 
our  industrial  system  is  out  of  joint.  If  it  is  out 
of  joint  it  has  come  to  be  so  under  an  educational 
system  which,  as  far  as  industry,  commerce,  agri- 
culture and  the  home  are  concerned,  is  wholly 
non-vocational.  There  appears  to  be,  as  a  mere  ar- 
gumentative proposition  at  least,  a  possible  merit  in 
the  other  extreme,  which  is,  of  course,  vocational. 
An  educational  system  under  which  industrial  con- 
ditions have  become  intolerable  for  the  worker  and 
which  must  answer  why  fifty  per  cent,  of  boys  and 
girls  between  fifteen  and  seventeen  years  of  age,  and 
twelve  per  cent,  between  ten  and  fourteen  are  not  in 
school,  would  seem  less  vulnerable  not  to  have  raised 
the  question  of  industrial  cleavage. 


WORK   AND    CULTURE  343 

Because  vocational  education  recognizes  the  eco- 
nomic limitations  of  the  individual ;  because  it  recog- 
nizes, not  that  some  boys  must  work  with  their 
hands  alone,  which  may  or. may  not  be  the  case,  but 
that  a  large  majority  of  our  boys  and  girls  must 
work  in  some  way;  in  some  way  perform  some  use- 
ful and  remunerative  labor  is  it  proposed  to  uni- 
versalize education  by  making  it  dovetail  into  this 
life-work.  Its  purpose  can  hardly  fail  when  its 
course  is  founded  on  both  native  instinct  and  eco- 
nomic order. 

"If  in  this  way,"  as  Dewey  says,11  "the  school  is 
related  as  a  whole  to  life  as  a  whole,  its  various  aims 
and  ideals — culture,  discipline,  information,  utility 
— cease  to  be  variants  for  one  of  which  we  must 
select  one  study  and  for  another,  another.  The 
growth  of  the  child  in  the  direction  of  social  capac- 
ity and  service,  his  larger  and  more  vital  union  with 
life  becomes  the  unifying  aim;  and  discipline,  cul- 
ture and  information  fall  into  place  as  phases  of  this 
growth." 

"  The  School  and  Society,  p.  107. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

TRAINING   FOR   CITIZENSHIP 

Measure  of  vocational  education — Its  universal  scope — An  in- 
dictment of  the  present  system — Fails  to  develop  latent  po- 
tentialities for  industrial,  agricultural,  commercial  and  domes- 
tic  work — Relationship  between  efficient  workmanship  and 
citizenship — Effect  of  habit  on  education — Economic  aggres- 
sions due  to  political  power — Wherein  classical  education  fails 
— Aimless  drifting  into  overcrowded  professions  and  the  re- 
sult— Our  wasteful  and  bad  government — People  fail  in  the 
simplest  duties — Individual  efficiency  means  social  efficiency — 
When  education  is  pointless,  the  level  of  citizenship  falls — 
The  failure  of  public  servants  because  of  ignorance — Specific 
training  for  citizenship — Teaching  the  morals  of  good  citizen- 
ship. 

There  can  be  no  higher  mission  which  vocational 
education  can  perform,  no  more  lofty  ideal  it  can 
attain,  than  the  training  for  useful  and  efficient  citi- 
zenship. Ultimately,  it  must  be  judged  by  this 
standard  and  measured  by  this  test.  Its  program 
rests  not  only  on  scientific,  individual  education  and 
training  for  the  managing  and  directing  vocations, 
but  also  on  like  education  and  training  for  the  doing 
of  common  things.  It  discounts  empirical  and  lack- 
adaisical methods  of  mental  and  physical  activity 
and  depends  for  its  service  in  behalf  of  useful  and 
efficient  citizenship  upon  its  ability  to  maintain  cor- 
rect habits  of  the  mind  and  hand.     Moreover,  it 

344 


TRAINING    FOR    CITIZENSHIP      345 

seeks  to  establish  proper  habits  among  approxi- 
mately ninety-seven  per  cent;  of  the  people  who  are 
now  neglected  in  our  scheme  of  education.  That  a 
man  is  employed  or  busy  is  no  proof  of  his  efficiency 
as  a  workman  and  that  he  merely  lives  in  an  organ- 
ized society  is  no  proof  that  he  is  a  useful  and  effi- 
cient citizen  in  that  society. 

"Every  one  who  lives  in  a  state  and  enjoys  its 
protection  must  contribute  through  his  work,  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  to  further  the  object  of  the 
state  as  a  community  for  the  purposes  of  justice  and 
civilization,"  says  Doctor  George  Kerschensteiner.1 
"Not  till  then  is  he  a  useful  member  of  the  state. 
And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  the  duty  of  all 
schools  supported  by  public  means  to  educate  useful 
members  of  the  state." 

An  indictment  against  education  as  now  admin- 
istered might  be  drawn  up  in  four  counts :  It  fails 
to  develop  latent  potentialities  for  industrial  work; 
it  fails  to  develop  with  satisfactory  progress  the 
nation-wide  movement  for  better  farming;  it  has 
neglected  its  full  duty  with  reference  to  the  needs 
of  the  business  world  for  scientific  insight ;  its  pro- 
gram for  home  life  is  not  comprehensive  and  has 


*Dr.  George  Kerschensteiner,  Director  of  Education  and 
corresponding  member  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Applied 
Sciences  in  Erfurt:  The  Fundamental  Principles  of  Continu- 
ation Schools,  one  of  three  addresses  delivered  in  America 
under  the  auspices  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Promotion 
of  Industrial  Education. 


346  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

failed  to  develop  a  very  wide  spirit  for  the  orderly 
management  of  the  home.  These  counts  may  be 
consolidated  into  the  single  charge  that  education 
has  omitted  its  complete  duty  to  the  industrial 
worker,  the  farmer,  the  commercial  worker,  the 
home-maker,  and  therefore  has  failed,  to  this  ex- 
tent, to  educate  the  great  bulk  of  our  people  to  be 
"useful  members  of  the  state." 

Aside  from  the  specific  approach  to  a  superior  re- 
lationship between  the  citizen  and  his  government, 
which  vocational  education  warrants,  in  definite 
training  to  that  end,  who  can  doubt,  for  instance, 
that  the  industrial  worker  will  have  become  a  better 
citizen  when  he  has  become  a  better  workman  ?  To 
some  extent  vocational  education  for  industry,  for 
agriculture,  for  business  and  for  the  home  will  auto- 
matically develop  a  higher  order  of  citizenship.  As 
a  special  committee  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  put  it  in  1909 :  "Owing  to  past  methods  and 
influences,  false  views  and  absurd  notions  possess 
the  minds  of  too  many  of  our  youths,  which  cause 
them  to  shun  work  at  the  trades  and  to  seek  the 
office  or  store  as  much  more  genteel  and  fitting. 
This  silly  notion  has  been  shaken  by  the  healthy  in- 
fluence of  unions,  and  will  be  entirely  eradicated  if 
industrial  training  becomes  a  part  of  our  school  sys- 
tem, and  in  consequence  of  this  system  of  training 
they  will  advance  greatly  in  general  intelligence,  as 
well  as  in  technical  skill  and  in  mental  and  moral 


TRAINING   FOR   CITIZENSHIP      347 

worth.  They  will  become  better  citizens,  and  better 
men,  and  will  be  more  valuable  to  society  and  the 
country."  Vocational  education  and  vocational  guid- 
ance will  complete  the  eradication  of  "silly  notions" 
about  work  in  whatever  quarter  and,  in  directing 
young  men  and  women  out  of  "blind  alleys"  and  out 
of  uneconomic  employment,  make  it  possible  for 
them  to  perform  well  the  part  of  useful  citizens. 

Our  educational  system  by  no  means  has  been 
inflexible,  but  it  does  not  change  fast  enough  to 
•conform  to  the  changing  ideals  of  successive  ages. 
It  ought  to  concern  itself  more  at  this  time,  for  in- 
stance, with  noisy  thoroughfares,  excessive  water 
and  light  rates  and  all  the  problems  of  rural  life. 

Several  explanations  are  given  for  the  failure  of 
education  to  keep  step  with  the  times.  Herbert 
Spencer  said  a  half  century  ago:2  "If  we  inquire 
what  is  the  real  motive  for  giving  boys  a  classical  ed- 
ucation, we  find  it  to  be  simple  conformity  to  public 
opinion.  Men  dress  their  children's  minds  as  they 
do  their  bodies  in  the  prevailing  fashion."  And 
then  he  goes  on  to  say  a  little  later:3  "Not  what 
knowledge  is  of  most  real  worth,  is  the  considera- 
tion; but  what  will  bring  most  applause,  honor,  re- 
spect— what  will  most  conduce  to  social  position  and 
influence — what  will  be  most  imposing."     Spencer 


a  What  Knowledge  Is  of  Most  Worth  in  Education  (D.  Ap- 
pleton,  1866),  p.  23. 
3  Ibid.,  p.  26. 


348  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

very  well  states  the  position  of  the  fond  parent  who 
wants  her  son  to  have  an  education  that  he  may 
avoid  everything  except  the  glamour  of  work,  the 
romance  of  service. 

But  the  consequences  are  sad  enough.  We  have 
undertaken  to  point  out  the  more  apparent  results 
of  this  system.  Likewise  we  shall  endeavor  to  show 
how  vocational  education  will  change  things;  how 
the  reorganization  of  education  will  usher  in  a  new 
code  of  styles  for  the  dress  of  the  human  mind/ 
Furthermore,  we  shall  state  briefly  the  rough  out- 
lines of  a  specific  course  of  training  for  public  serv- 
ice, for  citizenship,  and  present,  finally,  some  defi- 
nite suggestions  concerning  education  for  citizenship 
as  related  to  agriculture,  to  business,  to  industry,  to 
the  home. 

Since  the  advent  of  specialized  labor,  especially 
since  the  advent  of  machine  production  on  a  large 
scale,  there  has  grown  up  a  system  of  economic  ag- 
gressions having  their  inception  and  strength  in 
political  power,  which  have  plunged  large  sections 
of  the  country  into  industrial  anarchy.  Strikes  and 
lockouts  are  become  more  frequent  and  more  vio- 
lent. Oppression  which  miners  can  not  prevent 
peaceably  they  oppose  by  force.  In  the  wake  of 
industrial  feudalism  are  disclosed  a  whole  train  of 
evils — child  labor,  bad  housing,  lax  morals,  intem- 
perance, preventable  disease  and  crime,  besides  po- 
litical tyranny.     Having  won  the  privilege  of  ex- 


TRAINING   FOR   CITIZENSHIP      349 

ploiting  labor  at  some  distant  capital — Washington, 
Harrisburg  or  Denver — the  despoilers  press  their 
program  in  the  local  realm  where  their  word,  if  it 
can  not  give  life,  nevertheless  can  take  it  away. 
"The  great  mass  of  the  people,"  says  Franz  Oppen- 
heimer,4  "live  in  bitter  poverty;  even  under  the  best 
conditions  they  have  the  meager  necessities  of  life 
earned  by  hard,  crushing,  stupefying,  forced  labor." 

It  is  no  accident  that  the  few  are  able  to  prey 
upon  the  mass  of  the  people.  Productive  specializa- 
tion has  given  the  man  of  general  intelligence  a  su- 
perior opportunity  through  the  perversion  for  pri- 
vate and  personal  purposes  of  the  processes  of  gov- 
ernment. Commerce  and  industry  attract  the  man 
of  general  training  because  it  is  here  he  can  find  free 
rein,  both  for  his  imagination  and  his  power. 

The  few  educated  men  who  have  prospered  are 
most  interested  in  maintaining  the  status  quo  in 
education.  Our  bookish  curriculum  prepares  those 
already  possessed  with  sufficient  wealth  for  a  foot- 
hold to  exploit  the  producer,  and  to  some  extent  the 
consumer,  through  control  of  the  processes  of  pro- 
duction, distribution  or  credit.  Wealth  or  property 
is  the  complement  of  classical  training,  and  the 
young  man  surfeited  with  the  latter  and  minus  the 
former  is  at  a  serious  disadvantage  when  pitted 
against  the  young  man  with  both,  as  witness  the 


*  The   State,  by   Franz    Oppenheimer,    Private   Docent   of 
Political  Science,  University  of  Berlin,  p.  266. 


350  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

abject  failures  of  hundreds  of  young  men  who  leave 
our  colleges  and  universities,  their  heads  crammed 
with  Latin  and  Greek,  their  pockets  empty.  If  un- 
fitted temperamentally  for  teaching,  they  are  apt  to 
be  quite  as  badly  equipped  for  earning  a  living  as 
when  they  entered  college.  General  training  plus 
wealth  is  a  strong  armor  in  any  fight  for  special 
privilege  under  the  law.  The  significance  of  legis- 
lation which  secures  to  two  or  three  men  the  right 
to  buy  and  hold  a  water-power  site  to  the  prejudice 
of  the  public  is  indisputable,  yet  the  penniless  young 
man  out  of  college  can  not  take  advantage  of  such 
legislation  however  certain  he  may  be  of  its  poten- 
tial value.  It  was  the  man  of  general  intelligence 
who,  a  few  years  ago,  made  enormous  profits  out  of 
a  prohibitive  tariff  on  steel.  Our  schools  and  col- 
leges are  doing  valiant  service  in  behalf  of  those 
who  gain  economic  ends  through  political  means. 

Every  year  a  promiscuous  throng  of  young  men 
are  trained  for  professions  for  which  they  have  no 
aptitude  because  the  curriculum  is  directed  that 
way  and  they  have  little  choice.  It  is  of  no  con- 
sequence, apparently,  that  young  men  trained  for 
professional  careers  find  the  professions  over- 
crowded, unremunerative  and  disappointing.  The 
clientless  lawyers,  the  penniless  writers  and  mis- 
placed physicians  have  a  hard  struggle  for  exist- 
ence.   They  might  have  been  good  farmers,  skilled 


TRAINING    FOR    CITIZENSHIP      351 

artisans  or  successful  tradesmen,  and  they  would 
have  been,  had  their  training  been  in  any  one  of 
these  directions.  They  were  not  trained  for  these 
vocations  because  the  public  school  curriculum  of- 
fered no  opportunity  for  such.  They  contribute 
their  misguided  careers  to  a  system  of  exploitation 
partly  a  natural  growth  yet  consciously  fostered, 
which  is  waiting  to  swallow  them  up.  They  work 
long  hours,  make  many  sacrifices,  suffer  the  pinch  of 
poverty  for  a  high-school  and  college  education  and 
in  the  end  must  know  that  effort  has  been  futile. 
Having  tried  and  failed,  they  go  through  life  ac- 
cepting their  lot  as  one  of  the  pranks  of  Fate,  and 
feeling  that  somehow  their  failure  is  an  individual 
matter  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  a  social  crime. 
There  is  one  other  course  they  may  pursue.  They 
may  become  pettifogging  lawyers,  hack  writers  or 
quack  physicians  and,  therefore,  the  most  danger- 
ous factors  in  our  citizenship. 

The  curriculum  now  followed  offers  a  wealth  of 
inspiration  to  the  class  already  possessed  of  suffi- 
cient wealth  to  enjoy  it.  But  it  offers  little  to  the 
economically  dependent  class.  In  an  age  when  the 
dollar  mark  is  the  badge  of  human  virtue,  Latin 
and  Greek  are  poor  tools  in  the  hands  of  the  work- 
ing man's  sons  and  daughters.  Even  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  the  younger,  whose  advantages  were  above 
those  of  the  average  young  man,  was  moved  to  com- 


352  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

plain,  "In  these  days  of  repeating  rifles,  Harvard 
sent  me  and  my  classmates  out  into  the  strife 
equipped  with  shields  and  swords  and    javelins." 

Census  figures  show  that  nearly  twenty-five  thou- 
sand young  men  and  women  were  held  as  delin- 
quents in  various  institutions  in  1910.  The  peniten- 
tiaries, jails  and  almshouses  contained  nearly  five 
times  that  number.  A  large  majority  of  the  one 
hundred  and  thirty-odd  thousand  were  learning  the 
rudiments  of  a  trade,  first  because  the  state  com- 
pelled them  to  do  so,  and  second,  because  it  was  their 
first  opportunity  to  acquire  scientific  preparation  for 
productive  and  remunerative  labor.  Probably  three- 
fourths  of  all  the  people  admitted  to  the  peniten- 
tiaries of  the  United  States  have  no  trade. 
Eighty-one  per  cent,  of  the  inmates  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  Indiana  State 
Reformatory,  in  typical  periods,  were  without  a 
trade. 

Another  striking  fact  in  the  census  report  on  ju- 
venile delinquents  is  that  the  leading  crimes  for 
which  the  twenty-five  thousand  young  men  and 
women  were  held  in  institutions  in  1910  were  lar- 
ceny and  burglary.  Very  good  reason  appears  for 
believing  that  these  crimes  were  the  result  of  a  fail- 
ure of  the  state  to  train  the  young  men  and  women 
to  earn  a  livelihood  by  honorable  and  productive 
labor. 

Crime  and  delinquency  are  no  longer  regarded  as 


TRAINING    FOR   CITIZENSHIP      353 

wholly  personal  or  individual  matters.  The  cases 
are  personal  and  individual,  but  the  causes  lie  deep 
in  our  social  fabric  and  as  a  problem  of  raising  the 
level  of  citizenship  the  burden  of  crime  and  delin- 
quency rests  with  the  state  and  society  of  which  our 
unfortunate  classes  are  a  part. 

Since  our  development,  during  the  hundred-odd 
years  of  the  republic,  has  been  emphatically  indus- 
trial rather  than  intellectual  or  classical  we  may  won- 
der that  the  cast  of  our  citizenship  does  not  resemble 
the  mold  of  our  curriculum,  or  rather  at  the  fail- 
ure of  the  curriculum  naturally  to  adapt  itself  to 
our  most  glaring  educational  needs. 

Notwithstanding  our  emphasis  on  classical  sub- 
jects, we  have  little  to  show  for  our  pains  in  this 
particular.  We  have  produced  a  very  few  men  of 
world  eminence  in  art  or  literature.  Although  our 
scientists  have  produced  epochal  inventions  and 
have  made  some  revolutionary  discoveries,  almost 
invariably  they  owe  little  of  their  genius  or  inspira- 
tion to  our  school  system.  Our  curriculum  does  not 
foster  scientific  research  in  the  industrial  world,  and 
our  development  in  this  particular  is  due  largely  to 
our  great  natural  resources.  This  development,  in 
spite  of  the  curriculum,  has  furnished  the  invita- 
tion to  science  and  invention.  The  school  system 
has  done  little. 

Young  men  and  women  who  come  under  the  influ- 
ence of  our  formal  education  learn  thoroughly  the 


354  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

scope  of  their  privileges  and  immunities  as  citizens 
of  the  republic,  but  in  the  public  schools  they  will 
hear  little  said  about  their  duties  as  citizens.  There 
is  abundant  emphasis  on  their  theoretical  political 
power  under  the  universal  franchise  but  little  direc- 
tion as  to  the  intelligent  use  of  the  ballot.  We  spend 
vast  sums  of  money  to  preserve  the  traditions  of 
Roman  and  Greek  democracies  and  practically  none 
to  perfect  the  operation  of  our  own.  Aside  from 
the  fact  that  we  waste  at  least  one  billion  dollars 
every  year  in  maintaining  our  federal,  state,  county 
and  city  governments,  they  are  still  pitiably  ineffi- 
cient, honeycombed  with  petty  graft,  and  stupid. 

Farmers  who  are  honestly  devoted  to  improved 
roads,  for  instance,  are  duped  into  support  of  Lin- 
coln highways  or  Dixie  highways  which  for  them 
can  have  little  economic  advantage.  In  the  mean- 
time, the  local  roads  which  they  do  use  are  allowed 
to  suffer  for  want  of  competent  engineers  and  scien- 
tific methods.  People  in  the  cities  suffer  growing 
misery  from  dust,  smoke  and  noise  because  the  men 
whom  they  elect  to  office  are  so  wanting  in  informa- 
tion that  they  do  not  know  how  to  attack  these  prob- 
lems. The  city  beautiful  has  become  the  city  hide- 
ous. Suburbanites  pay  the  nickel  for  the  seat  on  the 
street-car  they  do  not  get  and  hang  to  a  strap  be- 
cause the  company  has  convinced  them  there  is  no 
other  way.  The  company  also  convinces  the  candi- 
date for  office  there  is  no  other  way  when  it  sends 


TRAINING   FOR  CITIZENSHIP      355 

in  its  check  as  a  contribution  to  his  campaign.  Tene- 
ments reek  with  filth  and  disease ;  poverty,  crime  and 
pestilence  are  probably  gaining  on  the  population. 
Segregated  vice  is  suffered  to  exist  because  it  is  the 
inevitable  consequence  of  licensed  intemperance,  as 
well  as  one  of  its  causes.  That  two  or  three  thou- 
sand men  in  a  single  county  are  disfranchised  for 
selling  their  votes  or  a  group  of  city  officials  impris- 
oned for  election  frauds  is  unimportant,  except  as  it 
goes  to  show  there  must  be  other  counties  where 
large  numbers  of  voters  sell  their  franchise  and  keep 
out  of  court,  and  other  city  officials  who  are  guilty 
of  equally  nefarious  though  less  flagrant  frauds  and 
who  have  not  been  punished.  At  this  time  a  man 
who  has  been  proved  under  the  law  to  be  a  corrup- 
tionist  is  a  member  of  the  constitutional  convention 
of  a  great  state  and  will  assist  in  framing  the  basic 
law  of  that  commonwealth.  This  is  the  order  of 
citizenship  we  get  under  a  dilettante  system  of  edu- 
cation which  prepares  young  men  and  young  women 
for,  say,  a  most  successful  courtship,  but  there  stops. 
If  no  better  conditions  could  be  realized  it  would 
be  useless  to  condemn  and  inexcusable  to  criticize. 
Presently  a  system  superior  to  formal  education  as 
a  basis  of  useful  citizenship  will  be  presented. 

To  summarize  what  has  been  said  of  an  educa- 
tional system  which  fails  to  produce  useful  citizens : 
(1)  Lack  of  efficient  training  for  industry  has  per- 
mitted one  class  of  citizens  to  prey  upon  the  igno- 


356  LEARNING    TO    EARN 

ranee  and  inaptitude  of  a  much  larger  class.  (2) 
Vocational  misfits,  arising  out  of  the  narrowly  re- 
stricted system  of  education,  for  want  of  an  honor- 
able means  to  earn  a  livelihood  resort  to  sharp 
practises  and  become  parasites  in  society.  ( 3 )  Our 
penal  institutions  furnish  eloquent  testimony  of  the 
social  disaster  resulting  from  the  failure  to  train 
young  men  for  an  honorable  calling.  (4)  Due  to 
an  unparalleled  wealth  of  natural  resources,  our  de- 
velopment is  almost  wholly  industrial,  and  even  our 
classical  curriculum  has  little  to  show  for  its  effort. 
(5) Finally,  government  is  wasteful  and  inefficient 
and  our  people  are  failing  in  the  simplest  duties  of 
citizenship. 

It  hardly  seems  necessary  to  call  attention  to  the 
relation  between  these  conditions  and  useful  citizen- 
ship, the  ideal  we  have  set  up  as  the  mission  of  edu- 
cation. It  requires  no  great  imagination  to  under- 
stand that  the  working  man,  who  must  battle  with 
his  master  for  primary  justice — for  the  right  to  live 
decently — can  not  perform  adequately  the  duties  of 
a  useful  citizen;  nor  any  occult  power  to  appreciate 
the  shortcomings  of  the  industrial  autocrat  as  a  use- 
ful citizen.  We  can  not  very  well  classify  occupa- 
tional misfits  or  spurious  products  of  professional 
schools  as  useful  citizens.  Delinquents  hardly  fall 
in  this  category  and  men  who  are  trained  for  one 
thing  and  follow  another,  however  fast  profits  or 
earnings  accumulate,  scarcely  realize  their  fullest 


TRAINING    FOR    CITIZENSHIP      357 

native  capacity  for  useful  citizenship.  Nor  can  we 
associate  the  mismanagement  of  public  business,  the 
stupidity  of  public  servants  with  the  highest  order 
of  citizenship  in  this  republic. 

How  can  a  program  of  education  which  provides 
for  intelligent  and  scientific  training  for  a  trade,  for 
some  remunerative  and  pleasant  work  contribute  to 
make  men  more  useful  as  citizens  ?  In  the  first  place, 
as  long  as  the  worker  is  poorly  trained,  as  long  as 
he  is  an  inefficient  factor  in  production  and  his  place 
is  easily  filled,  he  can  be  dominated  through  fear  of 
losing  a  poor  job.  Let  the  worker  become  a  skilled 
artisan  or  let  him  through  combination  or  coopera- 
tion gain  control  of  the  supply  of  the  product  which 
he  has  to  sell — then  he  becomes  a  potent  factor  in 
determining  hours,  wages  and  working  conditions. 
Moreover,  as  soon  as  he  becomes  a  skilled  worker 
his  power  and  importance  as  a  citizen  are  enhanced 
and  he  begins  to  tamper  with  the  machinery  at  the 
source  of  his  master's  political  strength. 

"We  must  keep  in  mind,"  says  Arthur  D.  Dean,5 
"that  simple  and  balanced  justice  make  it  necessary 
to  give  to  the  wage-earner  and  to  common  industries 
such  equivalent  as  we  can  for  what  the  present 
schools  are  doing  for  those  with  generous  incomes 
and  for  the  professional  and  managing  vocations." 

Industrial  education  promises  to  the  individual 
5  The  Worker  and  the  State,  p.  344. 


358  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

worker  intense  specialization  of  the  mind  and  hand 
for  a  definite  vocation.  It  implies  a  greater  measure 
of  individual  efficiency,  and  hence,  in  the  aggregate, 
a  greater  measure  of  social  efficiency.  As  industrial 
efficiency  increases,  so  will  the  earnings  of  industrial 
workers  and  their  opportunities  to  enjoy  the  com- 
forts of  life.  Happiness  should  be  more  widely  dif- 
fused because  wholesome  living  will  be  more  gen- 
eral. May  we  not  expect,  under  these  improved 
conditions,  a  more  alert,  a  more  attentive  and  en- 
lightened citizenship?  Good  government  is  not  to 
be  expected  from  the  group  which  subsists  by  ex- 
ploitation. Good  government,  if  it  comes  at  all, 
must  come  through  the  great  mass  of  people  who, 
besides  being  efficient  workmen  commanding  com- 
fortable wages,  have  sufficient  leisure  to  devote  to 
the  duties  of  citizenship.  We  do  not  expect  the 
shiftless  workman  to  perform  the  duties  of  useful 
citizenship;  shiftless  as  a  workman,  he  will  be  shift- 
less as  a  citizen.  Is  it  not  quite  as  reasonable  to 
expect  the  efficient  workman — miner,  plumber,  shop- 
keeper, farmer,  engineer,  bookkeeper,  housewife — 
also  to  be  efficient  as  a  citizen? 

If  education  for  industry,  for  agriculture,  for 
business,  for  the  home,  has  a  single  ultimate  promise 
it  is  that  there  is  to  be  an  end  to  the  encroachments 
of  one  class  on  another.  It  promises  the  greatest 
good  for  every  individual  in  society — for  all  of  the 
thirty-eight  million  people  in  this  country  engaged 


TRAINING   FOR    CITIZENSHIP      359 

in  gainful  occupations.  It  is  education  not  for  mi- 
norities, not  for  majorities,  but  for  all  the  people. 
All  this,  surely,  is  the  substance  of  useful  citizenship. 

There  can  be  no  question  concerning  the  efficiency 
of  vocational  education  as  a  factor  in  citizenship  if 
it  will  reduce  the  number  of  square  pegs  for  round 
holes;  if  young  men  and  women  can  be  placed  more 
advantageously  in  work  they  like  to  do  and  in  work 
which  will  yield  them  a  comfortable  living.  This 
phase  of  the  problem  is  discussed  elsewhere.  Edu- 
cation, scientific  training  for  life,  is  offered  not  for 
three  per  cent,  of  the  people,  but  for  approximately 
one  hundred  per  cent. 

It  has  been  a  common  expression  in  this  country 
that  one  has  to  break  into  a  penitentiary  to  learn  a 
trade.  More  than  fifteen  years  ago  the  late  Charles 
R.  Henderson  expressed  the  opinion  that  "the  prin- 
ciples of  industrial  training  will  transform  our  pris- 
ons and  even  make  them  suggestive  and  instructive 
in  respect  to  the  educational  processes  of  the  outside 
world  of  freedom/'  Prisons  and  reformatories, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  have  pointed  the  way  to  a 
universal  system  of  industrial  education.  When  we 
discovered  that  industrial  training  is  good  for  delin- 
quents we  began  to  wonder  whether  it  would  not  be 
good  for  boys  and  girls  before  they  have  had  a 
chance  to  become  delinquents.  To  confine  trade 
training  to  reformatories  and  prisons  is  like  locking 
the  door  after  the  horse  is  stolen,  except  that  it  is  a 


360  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

bit  more  disastrous  to  society  to  lose  a  boy  by  neg- 
lecting him  than  to  lose  a  horse  by  leaving  the  door 
unlocked.  The  importance  of  compulsory  trade 
training  for  young  men  and  women  has  magical  pos- 
sibilities as  a  preventive  for  delinquency  and  crime 
and  hence  as  a  factor  in  citizenship. 

Public  education  was  undertaken  in  this  country 
on  the  theory  that  the  state,  for  its  own  protection 
and  perpetuity,  should  educate  its  citizens  to  perform 
their  duties  as  such.  Discovery  of  unsurpassed  nat- 
ural resources  has  transformed  the  very  fabric  of 
our  civilization,  but  the  dominant  purpose  of  educa- 
tion has  scarcely  changed.  Classical  antiquities  are 
the  ruling  order  of  instruction,  the  daily  program 
of  study.  If  the  level  of  citizenship  has  fallen,  un- 
der classical  forms  of  instruction,  we  can  hardly  be 
surprised  since  prevailing  educational  ideals  are 
more  or  less  pointless  in  the  new  civilization.  Edu- 
cation needs  to  catch  up  with  the  dominant  indus- 
trial, agricultural,  commercial  and  domestic  needs 
of  the  day  if  citizenship  is  to  attain  its  former  level. 
Moreover,  if  useful  citizenship  is  once  attained,  it 
can  only  maintain  a  given  standard  of  usefulness  if 
education  keeps  pace  with  our  vocational  interests. 

What  can  education  do  to  remedy  the  indifference 
of  public  officials,  the  mismanagement  of  public  af- 
fairs? Rather,  what  can  education  do  in  behalf  of 
efficient  government  that  it  is  not  already  doing? 
Allowing  for  the  inherent  defects  of  democratic 


TRAINING    FOR    CITIZENSHIP      361 

government — and  it  must  be  admitted  that  popular 
government  naturally  lacks  the  mechanical  order  and 
rigid  precision  of  autocracies  or  tyrannies — there  is 
still  a  vast  unexplored  hinterland  in  the  domain  of 
citizenship  that  awaits  the  conquest  of  education. 

Assuming  that  the  crux  of  useful  citizenship  is  an 
enlightened  and  vigilant  electorate,  ours  is  a  prob- 
lem of  diffusing  intelligence  and  inspiring  moral 
courage.  People  know  little  about  their  government 
except  what  they  are  told  in  the  passion  and  fever 
of  political  campaigns,  which  is  generally  wrong. 
The  late  Senator  Aldrich  was  authority  for  the 
statement  that  there  is  an  annual  waste  of  three  hun- 
dred million  dollars  in  our  federal  government,  yet 
the  average  man  has  not  the  remotest  idea  of  where 
the  waste  is  except  to  entertain  the  general  suspicion 
that  it  is  everywhere.  Even  Mr.  Aldrich,  who  had 
a  long  experience  in  the  United  States  Senate,  failed 
to  disclose  the  sources  of  the  leaks.  Every  two 
years  we  elect  four  or  five  hundred  men  to  the 
lower  house  of  Congress,  who  are  honored  citizens 
"back  home"  and  who,  nevertheless,  yield  to  a  half 
dozen  men  in  Congress  because  only  they  know  any- 
thing about  government.  We  elect  tax  appraisers, 
members  of  state  legislatures,  mayors  of  great  cities, 
even  governors  of  states,  men  who  have  only  vague 
notions  of  the  science  of  government,  in  the  same 
offhand  way. 

What  can  education  do  here  ?    On  the  theory  that 


362  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

the  public  service  is  a  distinct  vocation,  education 
can  train  specifically  for  public  service.  Education 
can  train  tax  appraisers,  probably  members  of 
state  legislatures,  certainly  mayors  and  perhaps  gov- 
ernors. Needless  to  say  it  is  already  done  in  some 
parts  of  the  world  and  in  this  country  the  germs  are 
already  well  planted  in  the  city  manager  idea  of 
municipal  government. 

Experts  in  government  is  an  offensive  idea  to  po- 
litical bosses  but  a  very  practical  idea  from  the 
standpoint  of  better  government. 

It  is  not  sufficient,  however,  to  educate  for  citizen- 
ship only  those  persons  who  are  to  fill  public  office. 
Probably  if  the  so-called  rank  and  file  were  better 
informed  the  specific  training  for  public  service 
would  follow  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  common 
man  needs  to  know  more  about  his  government,  es- 
pecially the  government  nearest  to  him.  Education 
for  government  must  begin  in  the  public  schools. 
Public  instruction  in  civics  at  present  lacks  concrete- 
ness  because  it  is  based  on  text-books  that  are  ob- 
solete or  irrelevant  and  attempted  by  teachers  with 
no  special  preparation  for  the  work  and  no  first- 
hand knowledge.  Moreover,  training  for  citizen- 
ship is  probably  the  most  dynamic  program  which 
education  may  undertake  and  it  must  keep  time 
with  political  and  economic  development.  The  best 
basis  for  instruction  in  citizenship,  given  an  enlight- 
ened and  skilful  teacher,  would  be  a  good  news- 


TRAINING    FOR    CITIZENSHIP      363 

paper  clipping  service,  since  many  of  the  leading 
magazines  have  lapsed  into  "innocuous  desuetude.,, 
Training  for  citizenship  in  the  public  schools  has 
more  than  one  channel  to  follow,  though  their 
boundaries  are  sharply  defined  by  the  dominant  vo- 
cational interests  of  the  community.  While  the 
city  schools  must  concern  themselves  with  the  abate- 
ment of  the  smoke  nuisance,  the  suppression  of  use- 
less noises,  city  planning,  municipal  ownership,  the 
elimination  of  dust,  the  regulation  of  traffic,  public 
safety,  street  paving,  franchises  and  the  organization 
of  city  government,  the  rural  schools  will  deal  with 
a  different  group  of  problems.  Here  good  roads, 
cooperation,  tenancy,  agricultural  credit,  commu- 
nity centers,  legislation  for  the  control  of  products 
used,  raised  or  sold  on  the  farm,  the  organization 
of  the  various  official  agencies  for  promoting  agri- 
culture, the  intimate  workings  of  township,  county 
and  state  government  are  the  dominant  interests. 
Certain  subjects  or  problems  are  common  or  of 
interest  to  both  city  and  country — taxation,  schools, 
markets,  transportation,  socialism,  civil  service,  pri- 
mary election  reform  and  the  courts.  In  the  realm 
of  useful  citizenship,  certain  subjects  or  problems 
are  patent  to  occupational  interests,  as,  for  instance, 
those  young  men  and  women  who  have  chosen  a 
business  career  should  know  about  markets,  the  con- 
sular system,  monopolies,  banking,  interlocking  di- 
rectorates, currency  and  industrial  insurance,  not 


364  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

merely  as  phases  of  business,  but  as  phases  of  good 
citizenship.  Industrial  workers  are  especially  con- 
cerned with  unemployment,  collective  bargaining, 
strikes  and  lockouts,  industrial  arbitration,  social 
insurance,  housing,  child  labor,  cooperation  and 
industrial  safety.  Some  of  these  subjects  are  of 
immediate  interest  and  practical  value  to  young 
women  being  educated  for  the  home. 

By  no  means  is  the  program  to  be  completed  in 
the  prevocational  schools.  As  much  as  possible 
should  be  given  as  soon  as  possible,  though  some  of 
these  subjects  and  problems  are  beyond  the  compre- 
hension of  the  prevocational  student.  They  will  re- 
main for  the  vocational  school  proper  or  even  in 
some  cases  for  institutions  in  advance  of  the  voca- 
tional school. 

Our  greatest  fear  for  the  failure  to  realize  the 
program  lies  in  the  inability  of  teachers  to  compre- 
hend and  execute  it.  We  need,  therefore,  specific 
training  of  teachers  for  this  vital  work. 

It  must  not  be  taken  for  granted  that  formal  in- 
struction in  our  current  public  questions  only  will 
guarantee  useful  citizenship.  True,  it  is  an  essential 
element,  but  intellectual  independence,  moral  cour- 
age and  character  are  deciding  factors  in  the  life  of 
the  nation.  Instruction  in  public  affairs  is  chaff  be- 
fore a  strong  wind  unless  the  grandeur  of  noble  pub- 
lic service,  the  righteousness  of  intellectual  freedom, 
the  morality  of  useful  citizenship  be  burned  deeply 


TRAINING   FOR   CITIZENSHIP      365 

in  the  hearts  of  young  men  and  women.  In  poli- 
tics, "the  old  order  changeth."  Education,  too,  must 
change  its  dress. 

"The  old  order  is  the  persistent  expression  of  so- 
cial, political  and  educational  aristocracy.  The  new 
order  is  the  advance  agent  of  educational  and  indus- 
trial democracy.  The  new  order  is  as  sure  to  per- 
sist as  the  republic  is  to  endure,  for  it  is  the  logical 
outworking  of  the  democracy  of  the  nation."6 

'Andrew  S.  Draper. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


THE   IDEAL   SCHOOL 


Socializing  the  school — Meeting  the  needs  of  all — No  age  lim- 
its to  its  service — All  education  at  public  expense  and  under 
public  management — Studying  the  vocations — Charting  blind 
alleys — Keeping  abreast  of  the  times — Outline  of  plan — Work- 
ing with  workers — The  fruits. 

The  program  of  education  outlined  in  the  forego- 
ing chapters  means  a  complete  socializing  of  the 
public  school  system  in  order  to  meet  the  needs 
of  an  industrial  society  and  to  realize  the  ideals  set 
forth.  The  school  should  become  the  center  from 
which  will  radiate  all  activities  designed  to  better 
human  conditions  through  education.  The  ideal 
school  will  be  one  which  stands  in  the  forefront  of 
our  onward  moving  civilization,  discerning  new  ten- 
dencies, discovering  and  keeping  abreast  of  discov- 
ery of  new  truths  of  science  and  art,  analyzing  the 
ramifications  of  industrial  and  social  progress  and 
seeking  to  guide  the  young  and  old  alike  by  educa- 
tion into  ways  of  life  and  industry  which  shall  en- 
able them  to  live  completely  according  to  their  ca- 
pacities and  their  more  or  less  fixed  circumstances. 

The  school  must  be  universal  in  its  scope  both 
as  to  its  pupils  and  its  subject-matter.     Every  per- 

366 


THE    IDEAL    SCHOOL  367 

son  should  be  given  his  opportunity  to  realize  all 
that  he  is  capable  of  realizing  for  himself  and  for 
society  and  no  subject  should  be  omitted  which  may 
aid  in  any  adequate  way  to  the  promotion  of  indi- 
vidual and  social  welfare.  True  democracy  de- 
mands equality  of  but  not  identity  of  opportunity. 
All  grades  of  mental  and  physical  capacity  should 
have  an  equal  chance  for  their  fullest  development. 
A  mere  glance  at  the  conditions  of  men  and 
women  will  be  sufficient  to  prove  the  point  if  we 
accept  democracy  as  a  fact  and  attempt  to  live  up 
to  its  implications.  Some  are  capable  of  a  cer- 
tain development,  but  are  not  capable  of  a  higher 
development.  Some  find  their  means  of  expression 
through  written  and  printed  symbols  and  some 
through  work  with  their  hands  in  wood,  stone,  iron 
and  fabrics.  Some  find  joy  in  work  which  to  others 
is  drudgery.  The  work  of  the  world  must  be  done 
and  "the  varied  kinds  of  labor  will,  as  now,  differ 
in  the  degree  of  talent  required  to  perform  them."1 
But  as  Ward  further  points  out  "the  natural  differ- 
ences of  intellectual  capacity  will  be  great  enough 
to  furnish  each  vocation  with  laborers  who  are  cap- 
able of  performing  its  duties  but  not  capable  of  per- 
forming those  of  higher  grades.  The  adaptation 
must  necessarily  be  more  complete  than  now,  when 
sages  do  menial  service  and  fools  rule  empires.  The 
fitness  of  things  will  then  reach  its  highest  stage 


1Ward,  Dynamic  Sociology,  Vol.  II,  p.  601, 


36S  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

of  completeness  and  servants,  as  well  as  poets,  will 
be  born,  not  made."  Mediocrity  being  the  normal 
state  of  the  human  intellect  "the  real  need  is  to 
devise  the  means  necessary  to  render  mediocrity, 
such  as  it  is,  more  comfortable."2 

The  ideal  school  will  therefore  take  account  of 
the  possibilities  of  training  the  many  intellects  of 
infinite  variations  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  their 
possessors  more  effective  factors  in  economic,  social 
and  civic  affairs. 

The  ideal  school  will  know  no  limits.  It  will  be- 
gin with  the  earliest  possible  moment  and  will  con- 
tinue throughout  life.  It  will  make  of  boys  and 
girls  continuous  students  when  they  have  left  the 
school  and  have  gone  to  work  in  stores,  offices,  fac- 
tories, workshops,  forests,  on  the  farms  or  in  the 
professions.  It  will  be  a  constant  guide  for  ex- 
perience and  by  using  the  data  of  experience,  it  will 
enlarge  the  common  life  by  giving  a  basis  upon 
which  the  crudest  intellect  may  work.  Blind  ex- 
perience profits  nothing,  but  experience  touched 
with  knowledge  forms  the  Aladdin  lamp  for  the 
mass  of  common  people.  The  school  can  not  afford 
to  ignore  the  effective  and  permanent  results  of  ex* 
perience  guided  by  education  in  its  beneficial  effects 
upon  the  human  race  in  making  a  more  "comfort- 
able subsistence"  and  a  fuller  life. 

When  we  have  said  that  the  school  should  be  uni- 


*  Ward,  Dynamic  Sociology,  Vol.  II,  p.  600. 


THE    IDEAL    SCHOOL  369 

versal  we  have  directly  set  up  the  requirement  that 
it  shall  be  at  public  expense  and  under  public  man- 
agement. Democracy  demands  that  a  matter  so 
vital  to  all  the  people  shall  be  under  the  control  of 
the  people.  Moreover  private  enterprise  or  philan- 
thropy would  not  supply  the  universal  need.  Private 
enterprise  seeks  profit  and  profit  can  not  be  found  in 
universal  education;  philanthropy  seeks  out  the  ex- 
ceptional need,  and  the  mass  of  people  whose  educa- 
tion can  not  be  made  profitable,  or  who  do  not  make 
a  special  appeal,  are  left  out. 

Private  enterprise  in  education,  by  seeking  profit, 
is  baneful  in  its  influence.  Witness  the  low  estate 
of  medical  education  when  schools  were  operated 
for  profit  a  few  years  ago.  They  gave  enough  in- 
struction to  get  the  students'  money,  but  not  enough 
to  satisfy  the  requirements  of  society.  Or  witness 
the  great  numbers  of  so-called  "business  colleges" 
which  give  a  commercial  education  in  from  one  to 
six  months.  They  are  helpful,  to  be  sure,  but  they 
do  not  give  sufficient  education  to  satisfy  the  re- 
quirements of  business  or  of  the  workers.  Public 
management  and  control  of  the  ideal  educational 
system  are  necessary  also,  to  prevent  the  over- 
crowding of  some  vocation  and  the  undermanning 
of  others,  which  is  so  pronounced  in  our  day.  By 
offering  many-sided  opportunities  the  youth  are  led 
into  many  suitable  vocations.  Private  enterprise, 
by  offering  a  chance  in  a  few  vocations  which  it 


370     ..       LEARNING   TO   EARN 

finds  profitable  to  teach,  encourages  too  many  to 
enter  those  vocations.  Thus  the  chance  afforded  to 
young  men  a  few  years  ago  to  study  medicine  in  a 
privately  owned  college  coupled  with  a  lack  of  facil- 
ities to  study  some  other  vocation,  perhaps  more 
suitable  to  them,  led  to  the  attempted  training  of  too 
many  poor  physicians.  Private,  philanthropic  and 
public  facilities  afforded  for  the  study  of  law,  phar- 
macy and  engineering  have  accentuated  the  vicious 
distribution  to  the  disadvantage  of  those  professions 
and  the  public. 

The  implication  is  plain  that  anything  short  of 
universal  education  is  both  undemocratic  and  un- 
social. Society  should  not  extend  opportunities  to 
some  without  extending  equal  if  not  identical  op- 
portunities to  all.  Since  universal  education  is  an 
absolute  requirement  for  equal  justice  and  can  not 
be  acquired  under  a  private  system,  it  becomes  the 
duty  of  the  public  to  take  charge  of  the  entire  educa- 
tional system  in  order  that  the  ideal  shall  be 
approached  and  social  stability  maintained. 

The  part  of  the  school  in  the  care  of  the  indi- 
vidual has  been  constantly  increasing  and  will 
doubtless  continue  to  increase  until  eventually  the 
total  care  of  youth  will  be  under  the  guidance  of  the 
school  from  the  time  they  enter  until  they  have 
established  themselves  reasonably  well  in  the  work 
of  the  world.  The  ideal  educational  system  accepts 
the  responsibility  for  such  guidance  without  flinch- 


THE    IDEAL    SCHOOL  371 

ing.  Indeed,  it  seeks  the  responsibility  by  a  close 
analysis  of  the  educational  needs  of  all  persons  in  all 
walks  of  life. 

Recognizing  the  need  of  a  scientific  approach  to 
the  problem  of  educating  all  of  the  people  the  school 
surveys  the  field  of  the  vocations  to  learn  the  pos- 
sibilities of  education  in  each  and  to  gather  the 
data  upon  which  to  build  courses  which  shall  help 
in  the  practical  solution  of  the  vocational  problems 
of  workers.  It  will  look  into  the  processes  of  agri- 
culture to  determine  the  place  of  education  in  that 
vocation.  It  will  strive  to  learn  what  the  farmer 
needs  to  know  which  experience  does  not  supply 
and  will  devise  practical  methods  to  place  its  find- 
ings within  the  farmer's  reach.  The  school  will 
analyze  trades,  industries  and  commercial  pursuits 
to  ascertain  what  the  worker  needs  in  skill  and 
knowledge;  how  far  that  knowledge  and  skill  can 
be  obtained  in  commerce  and  industry ;  and  how  far 
the  schools  can  supply  that  knowledge  and  skill  that 
the  worker  needs  for  thorough  efficiency.  The 
school  will  also  learn  the  conditions  of  success  in 
trades,  industries  and  commercial  pursuits ;  the  eco- 
nomic rewards  offered;  the  conditions  of  entrance; 
the  physical  requirements  for  success  and  the  occu- 
pational hazards  from  accident  and  disease.  It  will 
chart  the  "blind  alleys"  of  commerce  and  industry 
and  will  post  a  sign  "no  thoroughfare"  upon  those 
which  do  not  promise  a  successful  career.     It  will 


372  LEARNING   TO   EARN 

not  let  young  people  enter  uneconomic  employment 
or  "blind  alleys"  without  fair  warning.  The  ideal 
school  will  also  analyze  the  processes  required  in 
making  and  maintaining  the  home  and  will  see 
wherein  the  home-makers  need  training  to  realize 
the  fullest  possibilities  of  living  under  modern  eco- 
nomic and  social  conditions. 

The  ideal  school  will  do  more  than  merely  ana- 
lyze the  existing  conditions.  It  will  keep  abreast  of 
the  discovery  of  new  truth  and  new  applications  of 
existing  knowledge.  It  will  learn  of  the  latest  im- 
proved farm  machinery,  the  latest  office  devices; 
the  most  up-to-date  shop  machinery  and  tools;  the 
labor-saving  devices  in  household  equipment;  and 
the  economic  and  social  changes  which  affect  the 
people.  It  will  be  a  medium  through  which  progress 
may  be  a  reality  to  all  the  workers  in  our  common 
life. 

The  school  will  provide  for  the  total  care  of  the 
educational  welfare  of  youth.  As  expressed  by 
Professor  Henry  Suzzalo  in  the  Report  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  Economy  of  Time  in  Education,  "This 
total  care  of  the  individual  will  include  an  efficient 
and  economical  system  of  education,  the  mechanism 
of  which  will  prepare  for  three  related  but  distinct 
types  of  adjustment.,,    There  will  be : 

1.  A  series  of  general,  cultural,  liberal  or  com- 
mon schools — elementary,  secondary  and  collegiate 
— the  function  of  which  will  be  to  train  men  for  the 


THE   IDEAL   SCHOOL  373 

maintenance  of  a  progressive  civilization  through 
efficient  membership  in  the  common  human  institu- 
tions in  which  each  man  must  inevitably  be  a  unit  of 
influence ; 

2.  A  series  of  more  or  less  specialized  vocational 
schools  extending  from  trade  to  professional  educa- 
tion— the  purpose  of  which  will  be  to  acquaint  men 
with  the  influences,  appreciations  and  activities  that 
are  essential  to  personal  working  power  in  a  chosen 
occupation ; 

3.  A  varied  series  of  cooperations  between 
school  and  through  institutions  which  will  guarantee 
an  apprenticeship  under  actual  living  and  working 
conditions,  the  supervision  of  which  is  to  be  domi- 
nated by  educational  ideals  and  controls  that  guar- 
antee that  the  growth  of  the  apprentice  shall  be  a 
more  important  consideration  than  his  commercial 
productiveness. 

To  this  should  be  added  a  fourth  form  of  educa- 
tion akin  to  the  third  which  is  cooperative  with  the 
economic  institutions  of  men  after  the  period  of 
total  care  has  passed,  consisting  of  those  various 
forms  of  cooperation  through  evening  courses, 
correspondence  study,  extension  work  and  voca- 
tional reading  which  seek  to  make  education  a  life- 
long process  by  supplementing  experience  of  the 
worker  with  useful  knowledge. 

The  child  enters  the  ideal  school  at  six  years  of 
age  and  all  of  the  time  of  all  of  the  children  for  six 


374  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

or  eight  years  is  devoted  to  that  fundamental  educa- 
tion which  is  necessary  to  establish  sound  "habits, 
attitudes  and  ideals" ;  to  give  the  minimum  of  nec- 
essary information  for  the  mass  of  youth;  and  to 
develop  "power,  inspiration  and  ability  to  go  it 
alone."  In  this  period  all  youth  should  acquire  the 
fundamental  tools  of  knowledge — reading,  writing, 
arithmetic  and  composition — and  become  acquainted 
with  the  data  of  their  environment.  By  proper 
correlation  they  should  learn  simple  elements  of 
chemistry,  biology  and  physics;  simple  business 
practises;  simple  art;  music;  elements  of  hygiene 
and  methods  of  physical  training;  and  some  ele- 
ments of  civics  and  social  economics;  handwork  in 
the  form  of  manual  training,  domestic  science  for 
girls,  and  the  elements  of  agriculture  should  be 
woven  in  the  right  proportions  into  the  work  of  the 
school. 

The  ideal  school  will  make  provision  for  the  ex- 
ceptional child,  both  the  one  who  is  backward  and 
the  one  who  can  proceed  more  rapidly.  The  "lock 
step"  will  be  broken  up  and  an  effort  will  be  made 
to  bring  out  the  latent  talents  of  the  pupils.  By  this 
means,  the  interests  of  pupils  will  be  aroused,  and 
vocational  tendencies  or  aptitudes  discovered. 

This  period  of  education  being  the  one  when  all 
of  the  children  are  subject  to  the  influence  of  the 
school,  it  follows  that  the  best  efforts  should  be  put 
forth  to  transmit  to  all  as  much  of  "the  heritage  of 


THE   IDEAL   SCHOOL  375 

the  race"  as  they  are  capable  of  assimilating.  De- 
mocracy demands  tjiat  the  best  that  can  be  offered 
should  be  placed  at  the  disposal  of  youth  in  this 
period  of  universal  attendance. 

At  the  close  of  the  period  of  preliminary  educa- 
tion provision  will  be  made  in  the  ideal  school  for  a 
widely  diversified  system  which  will  offer  the  kinds 
of  education  by  which  the  whole  people  may  profit. 
At  present,  there  is  ample  chance  for  youth  to  go  to 
high  school  or  college  to  get  a  broader  general  edu- 
cation or  to  enter  a  vocational  school  leading  to  a 
profession.  Technical  and  commercial  high  schools 
with  broad  curriculums  are  broadening  the  chance 
for  preparation  in  wider  fields  of  activity  and  are 
rapidly  displacing  the  classical  high  schools.  It  is  a 
move  in  the  direction  of  the  ideal  school  which  seeks 
to  add  to  the  present  facilities  many  different  kinds 
of  vocational  schools  which  prepare  youth  for  use- 
ful employment  while  giving  them  broad  educa- 
tional foundations.  The  school  should  recognize 
the  wide  differences  in  mental  and  physical  capacity 
and  give  a  chance  for  preparation  to  all  alike.  The 
school  will  therefore  provide  for  as  many  vocational 
schools  as  an  analysis  of  conditions  will  show  to  be 
needed  and  will  provide  general  foundation  courses 
leading  to  many  vocations  for  which  it  does  not 
seem  feasible  to  prepare  directly. 

The  third  type  of  education  required  in  a  school 
which   seeks   to   care    for   the   whole   educational 


376  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

welfare  of  youth  will  be  a  diversified  scheme  of  co- 
operation with  the  environing  world  of  industry, 
business,  farm  and  home.  By  a  broad  educational 
curriculum  including  vocational  schools  and  courses 
a  larger  proportion  of  youth  will  be  directly  cared 
for  by  the  school.  But  for  reasons,  apparent  to  all, 
many  children  will  leave  school  as  soon  as  the  com- 
pulsory period  has  passed.  These  children  have 
heretofore  been  left  to  their  fate  by  the  schools,  but 
the  ideal  school  does  not  shirk  the  responsibility  of 
meeting  their  needs.  It  seeks  first  to  find  out  if 
ways  may  not  be  devised  to  help  the  pupil  to  remain 
in  school.  Failing  in  that  it  seeks  to  cooperate  with 
a  suitable  employment  by  which  the  pupil  may  work 
a  part  of  the  time  and  still  continue  a  part  of  the 
time  in  school — the  ideal  arrangement  being  alter- 
nately, a  week  in  school  and  a  week  at  work.  If  this 
arrangement  fails,  the  school  permits  the  child  to  go 
to  work,  but  requires  that  the  employer  give  a  few 
hours  off  each  week,  during  which  the  child  must 
come  back  to  take  regular  courses  in  the  schools. 
This  care  by  the  school  will  be  compulsory  up  to 
eighteen  years  of  age.  Two  types  of  training  are 
there  provided;  first,  the  continuation  school  in 
which  the  general  education  of  the  youth  is  contin- 
ued to  enlarge  his  civic  intelligence  and  to  give  vo- 
cational direction;  second,  the  trade  extension 
courses  in  which  the  training  is  intended  to  supple- 
ment the  vocational  work  and  prepare  for  greater 


THE   IDEAL   SCHOOL  377 

perfection  in  it.  The  first  is  for  those  who  are  at 
work  in  "blind  alley"  jobs  or  who  have  not  chosen 
a  permanent  vocation;  the  second  is  designed  for 
those  who  have  chosen  a  vocation  and  desire  to 
master  it  fully.  The  school  recognizes  the  futility 
of  trying  to  teach  a  vocation  to  a  boy  in  a  few  hours 
a  week,  but  recognizes  the  tremendous  value  of  a 
few  hours  of  supplementary  education  to  the  youth 
already  engaged  in  a  promising  vocation.  It  would 
attempt  to  enlarge  the  general  intelligence  and  give 
a  vocational  bent  to  the  youth  in  an  unpromising  job 
and  it  would  seek  to  lead  such  youth  into  more 
skilled  employments  where  trade  extension  courses 
would  function.  To  the  girl  in  industry  it  would 
give  equal  care  for  a  supplementary  education  for 
efficiency,  but  would  recognize  the  larger  aspects  of 
the  girl's  life  as  a  home-maker  and  would  require 
regular  courses  of  instruction  to  enable  the  mass  of 
girls  who  are  in  automatic  employments  to  get  the 
best  preparation  possible  for  their  permanent  vo- 
cation. 

If  the  vocational  schools  and  part-time  arrange- 
ments have  been  properly  developed  the  ideal  school 
will  be  in  a  position  to  work  effectively  with  men 
and  women  after  they  have  passed  beyond  the  time 
of  school  attendance.  The  spirit  of  self-reliance 
brought  about  by  self -education  will  carry  the  in- 
quiring workers  into  the  evening  school,  extension 
work,  correspondence  study,  or  intelligent  reading. 


378  LEARNING   TO    EARN 

Many  will  find  the  means  thereby  to  enlarge  their 
knowledge  and  increase  their  skill  in  their  chosen 
vocation.  Many  will  find  a  means  of  refitting  them- 
selves to  their  environment  by  finding  a  way  out  of 
an  unpromising  vocation  and  into  a  congenial  em- 
ployment. All  will  benefit  by  instruction  which 
keeps  them  abreast  of  the  times  in  their  vocation, 
and  civic  efficiency  will  be  a  splendid  by-product. 

The  ideal  school  system  which  brings  all  of  the 
children  and  the  whole  of  each  child  to  school  from 
six  to  fourteen ;  which  provides  for  a  complete  sys- 
tem suitable  to  all  whether  they  go  into  the  ranks  of 
a  profession  or  a  trade;  which  extends  efficient  edu- 
cation compulsorily  to  all  youth  who  have  gone  to 
work  until  they  are  eighteen  years  of  age;  and 
which  gives  the  opportunity  for  an  effective  contin- 
uation education  to  all  persons  throughout  life,  will 
assuredly  give  results  which  will  be  shown  in  per- 
sonal efficiency  and  the  character  that  goes  with  it ; 
physical  fitness  with  its  promise  for  future  genera- 
tions; more  efficient  industry  and  agriculture  with 
their  results  in  national  welfare;  conservation  of 
vital  and  natural  resources;  thrift  in  management 
of  personal  and  public  business;  a  stable  social 
democracy  in  which  all  shall  be  equal  in  opportu- 
nity ;  and  a  culture  which  shall  be  a  reality  to  all. 

THE   END 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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ORGANIZATIONS  INTERESTED  IN 
VOCATIONAL  TRAINING 


ORGANIZATIONS  INTERESTED  IN  VOCA- 
TIONAL TRAINING 

American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Agricultural 
Teaching. 

American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation. 

American  Association  of  Farmers'  Institute  Workers. 

American  Bankers'  Association. 

American  Education  and  Cooperative  Farmers'  Union. 

American  Federation  of  Labor. 

American  Home  Economics  Association. 

American  Medical  Association. 

American  Posture  League. 

Association  of  American  Agricultural  Colleges  and  Experi- 
ment Stations. 

Association  of  Southern  States  Rural  School  Supervisors. 

Banker  Farmer. 

Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States. 

Eastern  Art  and  Manual  Training  Teachers'  Association. 

Eastern  Commercial  Teachers'  Association. 

Farmers'  National  Congress. 

General  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs. 

International  Congress  of  Farm  Women. 

International  Dry  Farming  Congress. 

National  Association  of  Corporation  Schools. 

National  Association  of  Manufacturers. 

National  Child  Labor  Committee. 

National  Commercial  Teachers'  Federation. 

National  Conference  on  the  Education  of  Dependent,  Truant, 
Backward  and  Delinquent  Children. 

National  Congress  of  Mothers  and  Parent  Teachers'  Associa- 
tion. 

National  Dry  Goods  Dealers'  Association. 

National  Education  Association. 

393 


394  ORGANIZATIONS 

National  Education  Association,  Department  of  Superintend- 
ence. 
National  Farmers'  Grange. 
National  Metal  Trades  Association. 
National  Society  for  Broader  Education. 
National  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Industrial  Education. 
National  Vocational  Guidance  Association. 
Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Engineering  Education. 
Southern  Commercial  Congress. 
Southern  Education  Association. 

Vocational  Education  Association  of  the  Middle  West 
Western  Drawing  and  Manual  Training  Association. 
Woman's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  (Boston). 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Ability,  tested  by  psychology,  272. 

Abnormal  children,  186. 

Accidents  of  occupations :  9,  46,  62 ;  prevention,  79 ;  extent  of, 
79 ;  Germany,  80 ;  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  81 ; 
losses  from,  165,  176;  failure  of  schools  to  teach  pre- 
vention of,  46. 

Accounting :  essential  part  of  agricultural  education,  12,  104 ; 
in  business,  129,  135. 

Activities :  classification,  7 ;  education  for  all,  27. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  351. 

Adjustment:  meaning  of,  6;  of  education  to  environment,  5, 
9,  19,  367 ;  of  individual  to  environment,  8,  19,  22,  39,  43, 
55,  182;  of  education  to  labor,  11,  60-88;  of  education  to 
the  home,  13,  143,  163 ;  of  education  to  farm  work,  13, 
89-115;  of  education  to  modern  professions,  14;  of  edu- 
cation to  commerce,  14,  116-142;  of  education  to  con- 
sumer, 15,  130;  of  education  to  wholesome  pleasures, 
17;  of  education  to  society,  18;  education  must  be  pro- 
gressive to  accomplish,  19;  education  must  be  dynamic 
to  accomplish,  19;  of  education  to  locality,  20;  of  pub- 
lic schools  to  environment  of  pupils,  28;  of  agricultural 
education  to  community,  111;  of  education  to  period  of 
time,  20 ;  of  home  education  to  locality,  148 ;  of  libraries 
to  locality,  254. 

Adult  workers:  part-time  education,  226;  library  as  aid  to, 
27,  28,  211,  250,  255,  261,  373;  correspondence  and  ex- 
tension courses,  231-248. 

Advertising,  135. 

Agricultural  colleges:  failure  to  meet  needs  of  farmers,  33t 
49,  345,  346;  failures  of,  49,  98,  99,  345,  346;  entrance 
requirements,  49 ;  short  courses,  101 ;  extension  courses, 
233 ;  national  aid,  312 ;  Morrill  Act  of  1862,  312 ;  Smith- 
Lever  Act  of  1914,  313 ;  correspondence  courses,  244. 

Agricultural  cooperation,  95. 

Agricultural  credit,  102. 

Agricultural  education:  89-115;  need  of  reconstruction,  12; 
in  primitive  society,  12 ;  for  youth,  101 ;  established  in 
rural  districts,  99 ;  difficulties  of  reaching  mature  farm- 
ers, 101;  should  be  scientific  and  practical,  102;  con- 
397 


39S  INDEX 

Agricultural  education — Continued. 

tinuous  process,  106;  flexible  to  suit  community,  111; 
text-books,  111;  women,  144;  part-time,  223,  224;  cor- 
respondence schools,  244-246;  national  welfare  depend- 
ent on,  318 ;  and  culture,  335 ;  teachers,  285-308. 

Agricultural  experiment  stations,  52. 

Agricultural  extension  courses:  98,  101,  211,  231-248;  largely 
for  adults,  232 ;  Morrill  Act  of  1862,  312 ;  Smith-Lever 
Act  of  1914,  313;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education, 
373 ;  universities  maintaining,  233,  235. 

Agricultural  libraries :  259 ;  county,  259. 

Agricultural  science,  not  in  possession  of  farmers,  50. 

Agriculture:  89-115;  county  agents,  50;  basic  industry  of 
United  States,  318;  need  of  specialization  and  training, 
114;  number  engaged  in,  58;  monotony  of,  223. 

Alcohol:  failure  of  schools  to  teach  effects  of,  46;  waste 
from  use  of,  166. 

Aldrich,  Senator,  361. 

Alexander  Hamilton  Institute,  New  York,  237, 

Almshouses,  inmates'  lack  of  trade,  352,  356. 

Ambition:  an  impetus  to  seeking  knowledge,  43;  lack  of,  in 
school  and  college  students,  44. 

American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation,  177. 

American  Federation  of  Labor:  210,  346;  Special  Committee 
on  Industrial  Education,  69. 

American  Posture  League,  180. 

American  School  of  Correspondence,  Chicago,  237. 

American  School  of  Dressmaking,  Kansas  City,  237. 

American  School  of  Home  Economics,  Chicago,  237. 

Animal  diseases:  47;  losses  from,  165,  173. 

Apprenticeship:  in  the  home,  10;  in  primitive  society,  10,  47, 
68,  198,  201;  in  medicine,  198;  in  law,  199;  lack  of,  in 
modern  industry,  11,  17;  inadequate  for  needs,  67;  atti- 
tude of  labor  unions,  69 ;  age  of  admission,  195,  205 ; 
vocational  schools  to  supply  deficiencies,  209;  compared 
with  part-time  education,  220-222. 

Architecture,  houses,  154. 

Aristocracy  of  education,  4,  31,  56. 

Aristotle,  266,  267. 

Arithmetic:  elementary  schools,  29,  187,  188;  examples  of 
obsolete  problems  in,  18. 

Art:  in  the  home,  13,  155;  leisure  to  enjoy,  17;  founded  on 
utility,  334;  culture  more  than  appreciation  of,  339; 
selection  of  pictures,  155. 

Artificiality,  in  home  training,  163. 

Associations:  business  men's  correspondence  courses,  242; 
private  vocational  guidance  dependent  on,  for  data,  282 ; 
interested  in  vocational  education,  393. 


INDEX  399 

Attendance  in  schools,  39,  217. 

Automatic  industry,  78,  206,  207,  215. 

Average :  age  of  leaving  school,  40,  42,  54,  183,  185,  195,  217 ; 
attendance  in  schools,  39;  earning  capacity,  79;  term  of 
employment  for  girls,  77;  length  of  life,  179;  man,  in- 
telligent, 26;  yield  of  farm  crops,  50;  service  of  teach- 
ers, 303. 

Ayres,  Leonard  P.,  40,  273,  278,  283. 

Babies:  care  of,  149,  159;  mortality,  159,  176. 

Backward  children,  374. 

Banking:  education  for,  120,  122,  136;  foreign,  136;  United 
States,  136;  country,  103;  agricultural  credit,  102; 
panics,  128. 

Bibliography,  381. 

Biography :  as  a  vocational  study,  83,  187 ;  in  libraries,  254. 

Blind,  vocational  training,  202. 

Blind  alley  jobs,  34,  77y  85,  195,  207,  214,  217,  225,  276,  283,  340, 
371,  377. 

Blue  print  reading,  37. 

Bookkeeping:  an  essential  part  of  agricultural  education,  12, 
104 ;  education  for,  203. 

Books:  supplementary  to  education,  27,  28,  211,  249-261,  373; 
for  workers,  250,  251 ;  for  professions,  251 ;  for  business, 
251. 

Boston,  trade  schools,  71. 

Brandeis,  Louis,  D.,  129. 

Brooks,  John  Graham,  95. 

Brown,  H.  B.,  301. 

Budget,  for  home  expenditures,  158. 

Building:   houses,  153;  materials,  154. 

Business:  16-142;  principles  of,  not  applied  to  practise,  24; 
number  engaged  in,  58,  136;  details,  117;  and  prosperity, 
118;  science  of,  119;  science  of,  evolved  by  business,  not 
by  schools,  121 ;  general  principles  of,  121 ;  occupations 
embraced  in,  120;  elements  of,  essential  to  all  occupa- 
tions, 120,  122;  failures,  128;  coordination  of  processes, 
128;  failure  of  schools  to  train  for,  129,  345,  346;  ef- 
ficiency, 131,  137;  attractive  to  college  graduates,  140; 
books  for,  251 ;  chambers  of  commerce,  243 ;  possibilities 
of  arithmetical  problems  in,  19;  knowledge  of  processes 
of,  unavailable,  52. 

Business  education:  13,  116-142;  begins  in  elementary  schools, 
120;  in  Germany,  138,  243;  United  States,  139;  college 
departments  for,  139;  women,  144;  correspondence 
schools,  237,  242;  chambers  of  commerce,  243;  private 
school's,  203,  369;  Alexander  Hamilton  Institute,  237; 
teachers,  298,  299. 


400  INDEX 

Butler,  Nicholas  Murray,  56,  268,  280. 
Buying,  for  the  home,  149,  157,  158. 

California,  cooperative  markets,  95. 

Candy,  waste  from  use  of,  166. 

Canning  fruits,  150. 

Capital  and  labor,  72. 

Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching,  199. 

Carpentry  correspondence  courses:  in  The  Carpenter,  238; 
University  of  Kansas,  241. 

Carpets,  selection,  156. 

Chambers  of  commerce,  commercial  education,  243. 

Cheney,  Howell,  83,  84. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  265. 

Chewing  gum,  waste  from  use  of,  166. 

Chicago  public  library,  industrial  branches,  256. 

Child  labor:  losses  from,  176;  extent  of,  282. 

Child  psychology,  160. 

Childhood:  waste  of,  175;  conservation  of,  216;  duty  of  state 
to  protect,  217. 

Children:  care  of,  149,  159;  attitude  toward  school,  183;  ab- 
normal, in  schools,  186;  laggards,  53,  183,  186;  back- 
ward, 373;  exceptional,  374;  juvenile  delinquents,  352. 

Cities  and  towns:  adjustment  of  education  to,  20;  population, 
90;  farm-to-city  movement,  50,  90,  96,  112;  adjustment 
of  domestic  science  to,  148;  adjustment  of  libraries  to, 
254;  duties  of,  under  system  of  national  aid  to  voca- 
tional education,  325 ;  obligations  to  vocational  educa- 
tion, 320,  321 ;  unequal  financial  resources  of,  322,  323. 

Citizens,  education  for,  25. 

Citizenship:  meaning  of,  16;  education  for,  20,  47,  266,  362, 
363 ;  and  vocational  education,  344-365 ;  failure  of 
schools  to  teach,  354,  355;  program  for  education  for, 
357;  and  efficiency,  358;  education  of  experts  for  public 
service,  362,  363 ;  education  for,  in  prevocational 
schools,  363,  364 ;  education  for,  in  rural  schools,  363. 

Civics,  failure  of,  in  schools,  362. 

Classical  education :  failure,  274,  347,  353 ;  wealth  the  comple- 
ment of,  349;  fails  to  follow  industrial  development, 
356. 

Clothing :  selection  and  making,  149,  152,  153 ;  waste  in,  166. 

Clubs,  women's,  161. 

Coal,  waste  in  production,  167. 

Coke,  waste  in  manufacture,  168. 

Collective  bargaining,  131. 

College  graduates :    business  attractive  to,   140 ;   failures  of,   I 
350,  351 ;  part-time  education  for,  226. 

Colleges:  state  provision  for,  prior  to  common  schools,  30; 
all  grades  of,  to  be  provided  at  public  expense,  33;  j 


INDEX  401 

Colleges — Continued. 

domination  of  high  schools  by,  54 ;  business  training  de- 
partments, 139;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  372. 

Commencement  day,  not  the  end  of  education,  23. 

Commerce:  13,  116-142;  possibilities  of  arithmetical  problems 
in,  19 ;  knowledge  of  processes  of,  unavailable,  52 ;  num- 
ber engaged  in,  58,  126;  details,  117;  and  prosperity,  118; 
science  of,  119;  science  of,  evolved  by  business,  not  by 
schools,  121;  general  principles,  121;  books  for,  251; 
occupations  embraced  in,  120,  elements  of,  essential  to 
all  occupations,  120,  122;  coordination  of  processes, 
128;  failures,  128;  failure  of  schools  to  train  for,  129, 
345,  346;  efficiency,  131,  137;  attractive  to  college  gradu- 
ates, 140 ;  chambers  of,  243. 

Commercial  education:  13,  116-142;  begins  in  elementary 
schools,  120;  in  Germany,  138,  243;  United  States,  139; 
college  departments  for,  139;  women,  144;  correspond- 
ence schools,  237,  242;  chambers  of  commerce,  243; 
private  schools,  203,  369;  Alexander  Hamilton  Institute, 
237;  teachers,  298,  299. 

Commercial  experiment  stations,  need  of,  52. 

Commercial  fertilizers,  109,  171. 

Commercial  high  schools :   139 ;  teachers,  298,  299. 

Commission  merchants,  94,  157,  337. 

Communities:  adjustment  of  education  to,  20;  adjustment  of 
agricultural  education  to,  111;  adjustment  of  domestic 
science  to,  148;  adjustment  of  libraries  to,  254;  duties 
of,  under  system  of  national  aid  to  vocational  educa- 
tion, 325 ;  obligations  to  vocational  education,  320,  321 ; 
unequal  financial  resources  of,  322,  323. 

Composition,  in  elementary  schools,  29,  187,  188. 

Compulsory  education :  56,  274 ;  failure  of,  to  accomplish  uni- 
versal education,  31;  justification  of,  183;  in  practical 
arts  in  elementary  schools,  191;  part-time  education, 
225. 

Conservation:  64,  137,  164-181;  money  spent  on,  80;  of  life, 
175;  of  life  in  Germany,  80;  on  the  farm,  109;  and  vo- 
cational education,  164-181,  201 ;  waste  of  resources, 
164-181;  of  youth,  216,  217;  of  health,  179;  and  voca- 
tional guidance,  273,  284 ;  part-time  training  for,  230. 

Consuls,  United  States,  training,  125. 

Consumers,  education  pf,  15,  20,  130. 

Consumption :  and  production,  15 ;  waste  in,  164-181. 

Continuation  schools :  220,  279 ;  teachers,  288 ;  in  ideal  system 
of  education,  373-377. 

Continuity  of  education:  23,  55;  schools  to  encourage,  28; 
agricultural,  106. 

Cooking,  148. 


402  INDEX 

Cooperation :  96 ;  between  employer  and  employees,  62,  72,  75 ; 
between  industries  and  school,  87 ;  markets,  95 ;  agricul- 
tural, 95;  local,  state  and  national,  in  vocational  educa- 
tion, 315,  318,  319,  324-326;  in  ideal  system  of  education, 
373,  375,  376. 

Coordination:  between  shop  and  school,  87;  between  proc- 
esses of  business,  128;  with  manufacturing,  in  distribu- 
tion of  goods,  128. 

Corn  specials,  244. 

Cornell,  Ezra,  21. 

Corporation  correspondence  schools,  237. 

Corporation  trade  schools,  68. 

Correlation:  between  practical  arts  and  formal  studies,  192; 
between  part-time  schools  and  industries,  225. 

Correspondence  schools:  28,  43,  55,  71,  225,  231-248;  largely 
for  adults,  232;  private,  weakness  and  limitations,  233, 
235 ;  universities  maintaining,  233,  235 ;  ideal  system  of, 
235 ;  types  of,  236 ;  corporation  schools,  237 ;  interest  of 
employees  in,  238;  project  vs.  course  system  in,  238; 
limitless  possibilities  of,  239;  as  adjunct  to  schools,  240, 
241 ;  associations  of  business  men  to  provide,-  242 ;  in 
commercial  education,  237,  242 ;  in  domestic  science,  237, 
243 ;  in  agricultural  education,  244,  245 ;  danger  of  dupli- 
cating work  of  schools,  246;  teachers,  288;  place  in 
ideal  system  of  education,  373;  Alexander  Hamilton 
Institute,  New  York,  237;  American  School  of  Corre- 
spondence, 237;  American  School  of  Home  Economics, 
Chicago,  237;  American  School  of  Dressmaking,  Kan- 
sas City,  237;  International  Correspondence  School, 
Scranton,  Pa.,  236;  School  of  Railway  Signaling,  Utica, 
N.  Y.,  238 ;  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Educational  Bureau, 
237 ;  Sheldon  School  of  Correspondence,  237. 

Cost  accounting :  on  the  farm,  12 ;  in  business,  129,  135. 

Cost  of  living,  education  for,  13. 

Cotton,  selection,  152. 

Country  Life  Commission,  103. 

Country  life  movement,  96,  112. 

County  agents  of  agriculture,  50. 

Course  system,  vs.  project  system  of  instruction,  238. 

Crime,  industrial  education  a  preventive,  359,  360. 

Crops :  ^  production,  United  States  and  foreign,  91 ;  diversifica- 
tion and  rotation,  105,  171 ;  pests,  109 ;  losses  from  pests, 
165,  172;  not  equal  to  soil  possibilities,  166,  167;  weeds, 
109,  165,  173 ;  average  yield,  50. 

Culture:  and  vocational  education,  327-343;  and  work,  327- 
343 ;  definition,  328,  336 ;  medieval  conception  of,  329 ;  of 
ordinary  work,  333,  339;  and  agriculture,  335;  in  Ger- 
many, 336;  economic  significance,  337;  erroneous  idea 


INDEX  403 

Culture — Continued. 

of,  338;  more  than  appreciation  of  art,  339;  for  work- 
ing as  well  as  leisure  hours,  340. 

Curriculum :  in  elementary  schools,  27 ;  rigidity,  53,  347. 

Dairying,  110. 

Davenport,  Eugene,  333,  340. 

Deaf  and  dumb,  vocational  training,  202. 

Dean,  Arthur  D.,  186,  357.  % 

Defectives,  vocational  training,  202. 

Deficiencies  of  training,  education  to  supply,  25. 

Delinquents :  vocational  training,  202 ;  lack  of  trade,  352,  356 ; 
juvenile,  352. 

Democracy:  educational  ideals  of,  21;  opportunity  to  all, 
foundation  of,  21,  34,  367;  failure  of,  to  provide  uni- 
versal education,  30;  problems  of  universal  education 
in,  33;  failure  of  schools  to  meet  needs  of,  39;  tenantry 
contrary  to  ideals  of,  100. 

Demonstration  farms,  244. 

Department  stores:  cheap  clerks,  133;  industrial  libraries, 
255,  256. 

Dependents :   vocational  training,  202 ;  lack  of  trade,  352,  356. 

Dewey,  John,  3,  4,  17,  20,  329,  330,  332,  334,  343. 

Dietetics,  13,  47,  150. 

Diseases,  losses  from,  preventable,  165. 

Diseases  of  animals :  47 ;  losses  from,  165,  173. 

Diseases  of  occupations:  9,  46;  losses  from,  165,  176;  national 
conference  on,  177 ;  causes  of,  178 ;  failure  of  schools  to 
teach  prevention  of,  46. 

Diseases  of  plants :  47,  109 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 

Distribution:  of  farm  products,  93;  of  goods,  117;  of  goods, 
coordination  with  manufacturing,  128;  among  occupa- 
tions, 265 ;  among  occupations  and  vocational  guidance, 
264;  of  labor,  211,  268. 

Diversified  farming,  105,  171. 

Divorce,  rates,  146. 

Dixie  highway,  354. 

Domestic  science :  13,  143-163 ;  elementary  courses,  190 ;  com- 
pulsory, 191 ;  part-time,  223,  226,  229 ;  failure  of  schools 
in,  146,  345,  346;  teachers,  294;  American  School  of 
Dressmaking,  237;  American  School  of  Home  Eco- 
nomics, 237 ;  correspondence  schools,  237,  243 ;  reason 
for  introducing  into  schools,  329,  331 ;  adjustment  of, 
to  locality,  148 ;  artificiality  in,  163. 

Domestic  trade,  126. 

Drainage,  losses  from  lack  of,  174. 

Draper,  Andrew  S.,  57,  365. 

Draperies,  selection,  155. 

Dressmaking :   148,  152,  153 ;  American  School  of,  237. 


404  INDEX 

Drudgery,  of  home  labor,  161. 

Dynamic  quality,  essential  to  education  as  adjusting  force,  19. 

Earning  a  livelihood:  10;  education  for,  20,  202;  failure  of 
schools  to  train  for,  61 ;  elementary  vocational  courses 
not  to  fit  for,  191. 

Earning  capacity,  of  average  worker,  79. 

Economic:  basis  for  industrial  education,  61;  changes,  10; 
losses,  164-181 ;  agricultural  losses,  174 ;  needs  of  indus- 
try, 62 ;  value  of  culture,  337 ;  waste,  164-181. 

Education:  purpose  of,  1-20;  philosophy,  3;  versus  practise, 
23;  correlation  of,  with  life,  28;  purpose  of,  misunder- 
stood, 31 ;  rigidity,  53,  347 ;  continuous  through  life,  23, 
55;  vocational  school  the  core  of,  211;  and  the  state, 
310,  311;  and  industrial  revolution,  329;  indictment  of, 
345,  346 ;  ideal  system  of,  outlined,  28,  366-376.  See  also 
under  Schools. 

Efficiency:  education  for,  11 ;  aided  by  libraries,  258;  and  citi- 
zenship, 358;  in  industry,  a  national  need,  316;  in  indus- 
try, Germany,  26,  62,  65,  66,  130,  167,  243,-317,  336;  of 
business,  131,  137 ;  of  the  individual,  66. 

Eggleston,  J.  D.,  85. 

Election  frauds,  355. 

Elementary  schools  :  182-196 ;  curriculum,  27 ;  in  ideal  system 
of  education,  29,  372-374 ;  per  cent,  of  pupils  graduating 
from,  41 ;  dominated  by  high  schools,  54 ;  failure  of,  57 ; 
business  education  should  begin  in,  120;  agricultural 
courses  in,  190;  domestic  science  courses  in,  190;  man- 
ual training  courses,  190;  text-books  for,  193;  length  of 
course,  193 ;  plan  to  transfer  last  two  years  of,  to  high 
schools,  194. 

Elimination  of  pupils  from  school:  40,  54,  183,  195,  217,  274, 
277;  causes,  42,  185;  statistics  of  pupils  leaving  before 
graduation,  224. 

Eliot,  Charles  W.,  43. 

Employer :  and  employee,  62,  75,  82 ;  obligation  of,  to  worker, 
215. 

Employment  certificates :  Indiana  law,  277 ;  number  taken  out 
by  untrained  workers,  277. 

Employment  offices,  one  phase  of  vocational  guidance,  269. 

Energy,  waste  of,  180. 

England,  grants  in  aid,  314,  315. 

Environment:  adjustment  of  individual  to,  8,  19,  22,  39,  43,  55; 
scheme  of  education  to  adjust  individual  to,  182;  vari- 
ability of,  22,  367;  adjustment  of  education  to,  5,  9,  19, 
(  367. 

Erosion  of  soil,  waste  from,  171. 

European  trade,  124. 


INDEX  405 

European  war,  and  vocational  education,  62,  123,  325. 
Evening  schools:   28,  43,  211,  225,  227,  228;  failure  of,  218; 

teachers,  288 ;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 
Exceptional  children,  374. 
Experiment  stations:    agricultural,  52;  commercial,  need  of, 

52;  industrial,  need  of,  52. 
Experimental  psychology:   160,  271,  272,  284;  ability  tested  by, 

272. 
Experts  in  government:   training,  362;  training,  should  begin 

in  schools,  362,  363. 
Exploitation,  age  of,  164. 
Extension  courses:    98,  101,  211,  231-248;  largely  for  adults, 

232 ;  universities  maintaining,  233,  235 ;  teachers,  288 ;  in 

ideal  system  of  education,  373. 

Fabrics,  selection,  149,  152,  165. 

Factories :  take  place  of  small  shops,  10 ;  products  of  Amer- 
ican, inferior,  61 ;  unsanitary  conditions,  179 ;  accidents, 
9,  46,  62,  79,  80,  81,  165,  176;  diseases,  9,  46,  165,  176- 
178;  number  of  workers  in,  from  fourteen  to  sixteen, 
216;  industrial  libraries,  255,  256;  inspection  bureaus, 
283 ;  humidity  in,  178 ;  poisons,  177,  178. 

Failures,  commercial,  128. 

Family  income,  spent  by  wife,  158. 

Farm:  property,  value,  92;  laborers,  100;  accounts,  12,  104; 
machinery  and  tools,  neglect,  109,  165;  system  on,  113; 
as  a  business  proposition,  92. 

Farm  crops :  average  yield,  50 ;  production,  91 ;  rotation  and 
diversification,  105,  171 ;  pests,  109 ;  losses  from  pests, 
165,  172 ;  weeds,  109,  165,  173 ;  unequal  to  soil  possibili- 
ties, 166,  167. 

Farm  education:   89-115;  correspondence  schools,  244-246. 

Farm  products :  markets  for,  93 ;  monopolies  in,  94. 

Farm-to-city  movement,  50,  90,  96,  112. 

Farmers :  failure  of  schools  to  meet  needs  of,  3,  49,  345,  346; 
education  of,  12,  97,  89-115,  244-246;  number  of,  58; 
mature,  unresponsive  to  new  ideas,  101,  245 ;  interest  in 
roads,  108. 

Farmers'  bulletins,  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture, 
245. 

Farmers'  institutes,  244. 

Fashions,  in  dress,  153. 

Fatigue,  industrial,  78,  82. 

Federal  aid  to  schools:   312;  grants  in  aid,  England,  314,  315. 

Federal  aid  to  vocational  education:  309-326;  training  of 
teachers,  296,  324;  agricultural  colleges,  312;  Morrill 
Act  of  1862,  312 ;  Smith-Lever  Act  of  1914,  313 ;  local, 
state  and  national  cooperation,  315,  325,  326 ;  migration, 


406  INDEX 

Federal  aid  to  vocational  education — Continued. 

immigration  and  inequality  in  resources  of  state  and 
local  units,  arguments  for,  321-323 ;  bill  before  Congress 
outlined,  324. 

Federal  Commission  on  Vocational  Education,  48,  162,  295, 
322. 

Feeble-minded,  vocational  training,  202. 

Fertilizers,  109,  171. 

Fire,  losses  from,  165. 

First  aid,  to  sick  and  injured,  160. 

Fisher,  Irving,  176. 

Flower  gardens,  157. 

Food:  shortage  of  supply,  89;  values,  9,  13,  47,  150,  165;  selec- 
tion, 149;  losses  from  waste  in,  166. 

Foreign  trade :  123 ;  education  for,  125. 

Foremen,  education  of,  131. 

Forests :  waste  of,  169 ;  fires,  171. 

Fruits :  growing,  107 ;  canning  and  preserving,  150. 

Furnishings :   for  the  home,  154 ;  waste  in,  165,  166. 

Furniture:  cheap,  130;  selection,  155;  waste  from,  170;  books 
on,  254. 

Gardens:  149,  156;  flower,  157;  truck,  107. 

Georgia  Club,  rural  survey,  304. 

Germany:  development  of  industrial  efficiency,  26,  62,  65,  66, 
130,  167,  243,  317,  336;  educational  system  of,  26,  62 
130 ;  Munich  trade  schools,  36 ;  skilled  labor  of,  65,  167 
industrial  laboratories,  66;  occupational  accidents,  80 
South  American  trade,  124;  commercial  education,  138, 
243;  culture,  336;  chambers  of  commerce,  243;  teachers 
for  vocational  schools,  288. 

Girls  and  women :  average  term  of  employment,  177 ;  trades 
offering  opportunities  for,  84;  business  education  for, 
144;  agricultural  education  for,  144;  industrial  educa- 
tion for,  144 ;  domestic  science  for,  143-163 ;  department 
stores,  cheap  clerks,  133 ;  drudgery  of  home  labor,  161 ; 
women's  clubs,  161 ;  as  judges  of  values,  145 ;  need  of 
trained,  145 ;  labor  of,  modified  in  modern  society,  145 ; 
education  for  motherhood,  159;  spenders  of  family  in- 
come, 158. 

Government:  perversion  for  private  interests,  349;  inefficien- 
cies of,  354 ;  waste  in,  165,  356,  361 ;  education  for,  360- 
362 ;  experts  in,  362. 

Graduates  of  colleges :  business  attractive  to,  140 ;  failures  of, 
350,  351 ;  part-time  education  for,  226. 

Graduation:  bridge  between  school  and  work,  23;  per  cent, 
reaching,  in  high  schools,  40;  per  cent,  reaching,  in  ele- 
mentary schools,  41. 

Grants  in  aid,  England,  314,  315. 


INDEX  407 

Harvard  University,  extension  courses,  233. 

Health,  conservation  of,  179. 

Henderson,  Charles  R.,  359. 

Heroes,  of  industry,  83,  187. 

Herrick,  Cheesman  A.,  121,  125. 

High  schools :  all  grades  of,  to  be  provided  at  public  expense, 
33 ;  per  cent,  of  pupils  reaching  and  graduating  from, 
40,  domination  of,  by  colleges,  54;  domination  of  ele- 
mentary schools  by,  54 ;  commercial,  139 ;  last  two  years 
of  elementary  schools  to  be  transferred  to,  194;  part- 
time  education  for  graduates,  226. 

Hoffman,  Frederick  L„  79,  178. 

Home:  training  for,  inefficient,  17;  as  a  business  problem, 
145 ;  failure  of  schools  to  educate  for,  146. 

Home  economics:  not  applied  to  practise,  24;  education  in, 
143-163. 

Home  education :  13,  143-163 ;  elementary  courses,  190 ;  com- 
pulsory, 191 ;  part-time,  223,  226,  229 ;  failure  of  schools 
in,  146,  345,  346 ;  teachers,  294;  adjustment  of,  to  locality, 
148;  artificiality  in,  163;  reason  for  introducing  into 
schools,  329,  331 ;  American  School  of  Dressmaking, 
237 ;  American  School  of  Home  Economics,  237 ;  corre- 
spondence schools,  237,  243. 

Home-makers :   education  for,  25,  77,  143-163 ;  number  of,  58. 

Homes:  building  of,  153;  building  materials,  154;  furnish- 
ings, 154;  waste  in  furnishings,  165,  166. 

Horticultural  pests :    109 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 

Hours  of  labor,  78. 

Houses:  building  of,  153;  building  materials,  154;  furnish- 
ings, 154;  waste  in  furnishings,  165,  166;  tenements, 
355. 

Human  life :  waste  in,  175 ;  average,  179. 

Humidity,  in  factories,  178. 

Hygiene,  inefficient  teaching  of,  in  schools,  46. 

Ideal  system  of  education:  outlined,  28,  366-376;  adapted  to 
needs  of  all,  367;  no  limits  to,  368;  entirely  at  public 
expense,  370;  industrial  surveys  in,  371;  research  work 
in,  372. 

Immigration,  an  argument  for  national  aid  to  vocational  edu- 
cation, 322. 

Income  of  family,  spent  largely  by  wife,  158. 

Indiana:  Commission  on  Industrial  and  Agricultural  Educa- 
tion, 251 ;  vocational  educational  law,  277,  278. 

Indianapolis  (Ind.),  Department  of  Attendance,  report,  277. 

Individuals:  adjustment  of,  to  environment,  8,  19,  22,  39,  43, 
55;  education  to  adjust,  to  environment,  182;  variability 
of,  22,  67,  367;  efficiency  of,  66;  natural  bent  toward  a 
vocation,  265,  269,  280;  ability  tested  by  psychological 


408  INDEX 

Individuals — Continued. 

experiments,  272;   increasing  responsibility  of  schools 
for,  371,  372. 

Industrial  accidents:  9,  46,  62;  prevention,  79;  extent  of,  79; 
Germany,  80;  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  81; 
losses  from,  165,  176;  failure  of  schools  to  teach  pre- 
vention of,  46. 

Industrial  diseases :  9,  46 ;  losses  from,  165,  176 ;  national  con- 
ference on,  177 ;  causes,  178 ;  failure  of  schools  to  teach 
prevention  of,  46. 

Industrial  education :  60-88 ;  causes  for,  61 ;  economic  basis 
of,  61 ;  labor  unions'  attitude  toward,  69 ;  to  promote 
skilled  labor,  82;  trades  offering  opportunities  for,  83; 
women,  144 ;  a  preventive  of  crime,  359,  360 ;  in  prisons 
and  reformatories,  359. 

Industrial* efficiency:  a  national  need,  316;  in  Germany,  26,  62, 
65,  66,  103,  167,  243,  317,  336. 

Industrial  experiment  stations,  need  of,  52. 

Industrial  fatigue,  78,  82. 

Industrial  laboratories:  66,  67;  Germany,  66;  agricultural, 
244;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  372. 

Industrial  libraries,  255,  256. 

Industrial  poisons  :    177 ;  causes,  178. 

Industrial  processes:  knowledge  of,  unavailable,  52;  descrip- 
tions of,  in  libraries,  254. 

Industrial  relations,  62,  72,  317,  348. 

Industrial  schools :  types  of,  71 ;  for  children  from  fourteen 
to  sixteen,  196,  205;  for  defectives,  delinquents  and  de- 
pendents, 202 ;  for  girls,  teachers  in,  298 ;  teachers,  285- 
308;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 

Industrial  science,  not  applied  to  practise,  24. 

Industrial  surveys :  35,  63,  85,  86 ;  for  vocational  guidance, 
269,  283 ;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  371. 

Industrial  unrest:  67,  72,  348;  and  vocational  education,  317, 
318.   t 

Industrializing,  of  regular  school  work,  38. 

Industries :  60-88 ;  number  employed  in,  58 ;  number  from 
fourteen  to  sixteen  employed  in,  216;  promotion  in,  76, 
77;  unsanitary  conditions,  178;  failure  of  schools  to 
train  for,  345,  346. 

Industry:  new  forms  of,  11;  effect  of  new  forms  of,  on  so- 
ciety, 329;  failure  of,  to  foresee  educational  needs, 
11;  knowledge  of  processes  of,  unavailable,  52;  eco- 
nomic needs  of,  62;  failure  of  schools  to  understand, 
82 ;  history  of,  not  taught  in  schools,  82 ;  does  not  supply 
education  for  those  at  work,  215;  obligation  of,  to 
workers,  215 ;  correlation  with  part-time  education,  225. 

Infants:  care,  149,  159;  mortality,  159,  176. 


INDEX  409 

Initiative :   industrial  education  to  develop,  63,  81 ;  lacking  in 

business,  129. 
Insect  pests :  109 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 
International  Correspondence  School,  Scranton,  Pa.,  236. 
International  Typographical  Union :  71 ;  course  of  instruction, 

238. 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  132. 
Intoxicating    liquors:     inefficient    teaching   of    effects    of,    in 

schools,  46 ;  waste  from  use  of,  166. 
Inventions:    American,   64;    effect  of,   on   society,  329;   not 

owed  to  schools  and  colleges,  353. 

Jails,  inmates'  lack  of  trade,  352. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  265. 
Jewelry,  books  on,  254. 

Joint  vocational  schools,  maintained  by  neighboring  communi- 
ties, 38. 
Juvenile  delinquents,  352,  356. 

Kerschensteiner,  Dr.,  328. 

Knowledge :  not  applied  to  practise,  23 ;  must  be  practical,  43. 

Labor,  history  of,  not  taught  in  schools,  82. 

Labor-saving  devices,  in  the  home,  154. 

Labor  unions :  attitude  on  apprenticeship,  69 ;  attitude  on  in- 
dustrial education,  70;  spread  of,  72;  organs  of,  in 
libraries,  254;  American  Federation  of  Labor,  210,  346; 
International  Typographical  Union,  71,  238;  The  Car- 
penter, 238. 

Laboratories  for  research :  industrial,  66,  67 ;  in  Germany,  66 ; 
agricultural,  244;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education, 
372. 

Laggards,  in  schools  not  always  failures,  53,  183,  186. 

Land :  increase  in  cost  of,  92 ;  increase  in  tenantry  of,  50,  100. 

Leaving  school:  40,  54,  183,  195,  217,  274,  277;  causes,  42,  185; 
statistics  of  pupils  leaving  before  graduation,  224. 

Leavitt,  Frank  L.,  281. 

Legal  education :    199 ;  apprenticeship  for  in  early  times,  199. 

Leisure:  education  for,  17,  20;  wholesome  occupation  of,  78; 
culture  not  wholly  for,  340. 

Leavitt,  Frank  M.,  281. 

Liberal  education :  vocational  education  as  a  part  of,  32 ; 
place  of,  in  ideal  system  of  education,  372. 

Libraries:  reading  rooms,  29,  111,  225;  continuation  of  edu- 
cation by,  27,  28,  250,  261,  373;  weakness  of,  in  indus- 
trial material,  252,  253 ;  specialization  in,  to  suit  locality, 
254;  useful  arts  departments  of,  255;  industrial 
branches,  255,  256;  Marshall  Field  Company  library, 
256;   agricultural,  259;  vocational  guidance  aided  by, 


410  INDEX 

Libraries — Continued. 

260;  books  for  workers,  251;  and  efficiency,  258;  and 
vocational  education,  249-261 ;  extent  of  cooperation  of, 
with  vocational  education,  255. 

Life :  waste  in,  175 ;  average  length  of,  179. 

Life-career  motive :  as  inspiration  to  seek  knowledge,  42 ;  to 
dominate  schools,  279. 

Lincoln  highway,  354. 

Live  stock,  raising,  110. 

Livelihood :  education  for,  10,  20,  202 ;  failure  of  schools  to 
train  for,  61 ;  elementary  vocational  courses  not  to  fit 
for,  191. 

Locality:  adjustment  of  education  to,  20;  conditions  in,  to 
decide  what- vocations  to  be  taught,  37;  adjustment  of 
agricultural  education  to,  111 ;  adjustment  of  home  edu- 
cation to,  148;  adjustment  of  libraries  to,  254;  obliga- 
tions of,  to  vocational  education,  320;  unequal  financial 
resources  of,  322,  323;  duties  of,  under  system  of  na- 
tional aid  to  vocational  education,  325. 

Losses,  economic,  164-181. 

Lowell  (Mass.),  trade  schools,  71. 

McGee,  W.  J.,  173. 

Managers,  education  of,  131. 

Manual  labor,  value  of,  underestimated,  74. 

Manual  training:  for  the  farm,  110;  in  prevocational  schools, 
190;  reasons  for  introducing  into  schools,  329,  331. 

Manufacturing:  education  for,  120;  coordination  of,  with 
distribution  of  goods,  128. 

Margolin,  Louis,  170. 

Marketing,  for  the  home,  149,  157,  158. 

Markets:   117;  for  farm  products,  93;  cooperative,  95. 

Marriages :  rates,  146 ;  unsuccessful,  146. 

Massachusetts,  trade  schools,  71. 

Materials :_  value  of,  130;  for  clothing,  149,  152,  153,  166;  for 
furniture,  30,  155,  170;  house  furnishings,  154,  165,  166; 
draperies,  155. 

Mathematics:  a  part  of  agricultural  education,  12;  problems 
in,  offered  by  commerce,  19 ;  examples  of  obsolete  prob- 
lems in,  18 ;  in  elementary  schools,  29,  187,  188. 

Medical  education  :  198;  apprenticeship  in,  in  early  times,  198; 
private  medical  schools,  369. 

Merchandising,  education  for,  120,  122. 

Merchant  ships,  American  lack  of,  123. 

Middle  Ages :  vocational  education  in,  47 ;  conception  of  edu- 
cation in,  329. 

Middlemen,  94,  157,  337. 

Migration  of  workers:  321,  322;  argument  for  national  aid  to 
vocational  education,  321. 


INDEX  411 

Miles,  H.  E.,  166. 

Millinery,  148,  152. 

Minerals :   waste  in,  165 ;  waste  in  production  of  coal,  167. 

Mining :  promotion  in,  77 ;  waste  in,  165,  167,  169. 

Mobility:  of  population,  322;  of  workers,  321,  322;  of  work- 
ers, an  argument  for  national  aid  to  vocational  educa- 
tion, 321. 

Modern  society:  increase  of  vocations  in,  10;  self-preserva- 
tion in,  10;  complexity  of,  17;  labor  of  women,  modified 
in,  145. 

Monopolies,  in  farm  products,  94. 

Monotony:  of  employment,  62,  72,  75,  78,  82;  of  home  labor, 
161 ;  of  agricultural  labor,  223. 

Monroe's  Encyclopedia  of  Education,  312. 

Moore,  R.  A.,  172. 

Morrill  Act  of  1862,  312. 

Motherhood,  education  for,  13,  20,  159. 

Motive,  for  seeking  knowledge  found  in  life-career,  43. 

Mulhall,  M.  G.,  92. 

Munich,  trade  schools  of,  36. 

Miinsterberg,  Hugo,  271,  272. 

Music:   education  for,  149;  teaching  of,  in  schools,  162. 

Narcotics,  inefficient  teaching  of  effects  of,  in  schools,  46. 

National  aid  to  schools:  312;  grants  in  aid,  England,  314, 
315. 

National  aid  to  vocational  education :  309-326 ;  training  teach- 
ers, 296,  324;  agricultural  colleges,  312;  Morrill  Act  of 
1862,  312;  Smith-Lever  Act  of  1914,  313;  local,  state 
and  national  cooperation,  315,  325,  326;  migration  of 
workers  an  argument  for,  321 ;  immigration  an  argu- 
ment for,  322 ;  unequal  financial  resources  of  states  and 
local  units  an  argument  for,  322,  323;  bill  before  Con- 
gress outlined,  324. 

National  Association  of  Manufacturers,  Committee  on  Indus- 
trial Education,  63. 

National  cash  register,  67. 

National  Child  Labor  Committee,  282. 

National  Education  Association,  Committee  on  Economy  of 
Time  in  Education,  193. 

National  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Industrial  Education, 
206. 

Natural  resources:  exhaustibility,  18,  64,  127,  356;  conserva- 
tion of,  80,  164-181 ;  preventable  waste  in,  164-181. 

Nearing,  Scott,  158. 

Negroes,  trade  schools  for,  71. 

New  York  (state),  trade  schools,  71. 

Night  schools:  28,  43,  211,  225,  227,  228;  failure  of,  218; 
teachers,  288;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 


412  INDEX 

Normal  schools :  Albany,  N.  Y.,  295 ;  inadequacy  of,  to  train 
vocational  teachers,  296;  Athens,  Ga.,  304;  rural  teach- 
ers, 51,  300-306. 

Occupational  accidents:  9,  46,  62;  prevention,  79;  extent  of, 
79;  Germany,  80;  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  81; 
losses  from,  165,  176;  failure  of  schools  to  teach  pre- 
vention of,  46. 

Occupational  diseases:  9,  46;  losses  from,  165,  176;  national 
conference  on,  177;  causes,  178;  failure  of  schools  to 
teach  prevention  of,  46. 

Occupational  poisons:   177;  causes,  178. 

Occupations:  increase  of,  in  modern  society,  10;  basis  of  uni- 
versal education,  33 ;  study  of,  28 ;  surveys  of,  35,  63,  85, 
86;  number  of,  85,  273;  embraced  in  business,  120;  ele- 
ments of  business  essential  to  all,  120,  122 ;  overcrowded, 
264,  283 ;  distribution  among,  265. 

Oppenheimer,  Franz,  349. 

Opportunities:  for  all,  the  foundation  of  democracy,  21,  34, 
366;  for  vocational  education,  28,  56. 

Orchard  pests :   109 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 

Organizations  interested  in  vocational  education,  393. 

Organizations  of  business  men:  correspondence  courses,  242; 
chambers  of  commerce,  243. 

O'Shea,  M.  V.,  8. 

Paint,  ingredients,  154. 

Panama  Canal,  124. 

Panics,  128. 

Parenthood,  education  for,  13,  20,  159. 

Parsons,  Frank,  269. 

Part-time  education:  77,  211,  213-230;  schools  should  supply, 
215 ;  obligation  of  industry  to,  215 ;  extent  of  need  of, 
216;  plan  for,  219;  continuation  schools,  220;  similarity 
of  apprenticeship  to,  220-222 ;  only  beginnings  yet  made, 
223,  224,  226 ;  in  domestic  science,  223,  226,  229 ;  in  indus- 
trial training,  226;  should  be  compulsory,  225;  correla- 
tion with  industry,  225 ;  for  adults,  226 ;  seasonal 
courses,  227;  courses  should  be  definite,  228;  scope, 
229;  teachers  for,  288;  place  in  ideal  system  of  educa- 
tion, 373,  375-377. 

Pedagogy:  based  on  worn-out  philosophy,  31;  value  in  voca- 
tional education,  294. 

Penitentiaries:  inmates'  lack  of  trade,  352,  356;  industrial 
education  in,  359. 

Personal  advancement,  an  inspiration  to  seek  knowledge,  43. 

Pests :  crop  and  orchard,  109 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 

Philosophy,  of  education,  3. 


INDEX  413 

"Phossy  jaw,"  177. 

Physiology,  inefficient  teaching  of,  in  schools,  46. 

Pictures,  selection,  155. 

Plant  diseases :  47 ;  losses  from,  165,  172. 

Pleasures,  leisure  for,  17,  20,  78. 

Plumbing,  in  the  home,  154. 

Poisons :  industrial,  177 ;  causes  of,  178. 

Population :  mobility  of,  90,  322 ;  increase  of,  127. 

Poultry,  raising,  110,  144. 

Practical  arts:  for  the  farm,  110;  in  prevocational  schools, 
190;  correlation  with  formal  studies,  192. 

Preserving,  fruits,  150. 

Prevocational  education,  182-196. 

Prevocational  schools:  182-196;  business  education  should  be- 
gin in,  120 ;  training  for  citizenship  should  begin  in,  363, 
364;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373,  374. 

Primitive  society:  7,  8;  apprenticeship  in,  10,  47;  agricultural 
education  in,  12;  vocational  education  in,  47;  labor  of 
women  in,  145. 

Printing :  schools  of,  71 ;  course  in,  conducted  by  Interna- 
tional Typographical  Union,  238. 

Prisons:  inmates'  lack  of  trade,  352,  356;  industrial  educa- 
tion in,  359. 

Private  correspondence  schools,  237. 

Private  medical  schools,  369. 

Private  trade  schools,  68. 

Private  vs.  public  control,  of  schools,  369. 

Production :  and  consumption,  15  ;  preventable  losses  in,  164 ; 
unequal  to  possibilities,  166;  agricultural,  167. 

Professional  education:  199;  apprenticeship  in  early  times, 
199;  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 

Professional  schools:  entrance  requirements  of,  32;  higher 
form  of  vocational  schools,  198;  extent  of,  in  United 
States,  200. 

Professions:  adjustment  of  education  to  modern  needs  of,  15, 
18;  overcrowded,  30,  264,  283,^  350;  education  for  those 
already  engaged  in,  25 ;  education  for,  available  to  select 
few,  56,  262;  education  for,  provided  by  state,  262*; 
books  for,  251 ;  number  engaged  in,  262,  283. 

Progress  of  society,  8,  18. 

Progressive  quality:  essential  to  education  as  adjusting  force, 
19,  347;  essential  to  universal  education,  25. 

Project  system,  vs.  course  system  of  instruction,  238. 

Prolongation  of  life,  179. 

Promotion:  in  industries,  76,  77;  an  inspiration  for  seeking 
knowledge,  43 ;  in  mining,  77 ;  in  textile  mills,  76. 

Prosperity,  and  business,  118. 

Prosser,  Charles  A.,  77,  286. 


414  INDEX 

Prostitution,  355. 

Psychology:  child,  160;  and  vocational  guidance,  271,  272, 
284 ;  testing  ability  by,  272. 

Public  officials,  education  for,  360-362. 

Public  provision :  for  all  grades  of  schools,  33 ;  for  the  ideal 
system  of  education,  369. 

Public  schools,  see  under  Schools  ;  Agricultural  Education  ; 
Commercial  Education;  Commercial  High  Schools; 
Compulsory  Education;  Continuation  Schools;  Cor- 
respondence Schools;  Elementary  Schools;  Evening 
Schools;  High  Schools;  Industrial  Schools;  Part- 
time  Education;  Prevocational  Schools;  Rural 
Schools;  Teachers;  Trade  Schools;  Vocational 
Schools. 

Public  service :  as  a  vocation,  362 ;  education  for,  362 ;  educa- 
tion for,  begins  in  school,  362,  363. 

Purpose  of  education :   1-20 ;  misunderstood,  31. 

Pythagoras,  266. 

Railroads :  education  for,  120,  122,  133;  federal  regulation  of, 

132 ;  reorganization,  132 ;  waste  in,  133 ;  correspondence 

courses,  237,  238;  School  of  Railway  Signaling,  Utica, 

N.  Y.,  238 ;  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Educational  Bureau, 

237. 
Rank  and  file,  education  for,  33. 
Raw  products  of  United  States:  65,  118,  123,  316,  356;  losses 

from  export  of,  166. 
Reading,  elementary  schools,  29,  187. 
Reading  rooms,  education  continued  by,  29,  211,  225,  249,  261, 

373. 
Recreation,  for  leisure,  78. 
Reformatories:    inmates'  lack  of  trade,  352,  356;  industrial 

education  in,  202,  359. 
Research,  scientific:  66;  in  Germany,  66;  agricultural,  244; 

place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  372. 
Richmond  (Va.)  industrial  survey,  86. 
Rigidity,  of  education,  53,  347. 
Roads :  farmers'  interest  in,  108 ;  Lincoln  and  Dixie  highways, 

354. 
Rotation,  of  crops,  105,  171. 
Routine:  of  business,  117;  of  home  labor,  161;  of  industries, 

78,  82. 
Rugs:   selection,  156;  beauty  of,  founded  on  utility,  334,  335. 
Rural  population:  90;  farm-to-city  movement,  50,  90,  96,  112; 

country  life  movement,  96,  112. 
Rural  schools:    weakness  of,  50,  97;  teachers,  51,  300-306; 

scope  of  training  for  citizenship  in,  362. 
Rural  surveys,  303-305. 


INDEX  415 

Safety  devices,  9,  176. 

Safety  first  campaigns,  unconnected  with  schools,  46. 

Salesmanship:   education  for,  133;  Sheldon  School  of  Corre- 
spondence, 237. 

Salesmen,  cheap,  133. 

San  Jose  scale,  109. 

Sanitation,  house,  156. 

School  of  Railway  Signaling,  Utica,  N.  Y.,  238. 

Schools  :  limited  to  few,  4 ;  should  keep  in  touch  with  youth  until 
eighteen,  27;  adjustment  of,  to  environment  of  pupils, 
28;  adjustment  to  locality,  20, 37,  111,  148;  colleges  estab- 
lished before,  30;  establishment  of,  31;  all  grades  to  be 
provided  at  public  expense,  33 ;  industrializing  of  regular 
work  of,  38;  average  daily  attendance,  39;  laggards  in, 
not  always  failures,  53, 184, 186;  devoted  to  preparing  for 
higher  grades,  53 ;  curriculum  too  rigid,  53,  347 ;  coordi- 
nation with  shops,  87 ;  cooperation  with  shops,  87 ;  ab- 
normal children  in,  186;  formal  method  of  instruction 
in,  192;  should  supply  education  for  those  already  at 
work,  215;  state  management  of,  310,  311;  local  devel- 
opment, 311;  local  self-government,  313;  grants  in  aid 
to,  England,  314,  315 ;  culture  in,  through  teaching  occu- 
pations, 332;  scope  of  training  for  citizenship  in,  363; 
training  for  government  in,  362,  363;  socializing  of, 
366-376;  public  vs.  private  control,  369;  responsibility 
of,  for  individual  increasing,  371,  372;  backward  and 
exceptional  children  in,  374.  See  also  under  Agricul- 
tural Education;  Commercial  Education;  Commer- 
cial High  Schools;  Compulsory  Education;  Con- 
tinuation Schools;  Correspondence  Schools;  Ele- 
mentary Schools;  Evening  Schools;  High  Schools; 
Industrial  Schools;  Part-time  Education;  Prevoca- 
tional  Schools;  Rural  Schools;  Teachers;  Trade 
Schools;  Vocational  Schools. 
Schools,  elimination  of  pupils:  40,  54,  183,  195,  217,  274,  277; 
causes,  42;  statistics  of  pupils  leaving  before  gradua- 
tion, 224. 
Schools,  failures:  to  meet  needs  of  farm  life,  3,  49,  345,  346; 
to  accomplish  universal  education,  31 ;  to  meet  needs  of 
democracy,  39;  to  adjust  individual  to  democracy,  55, 
330,  331;  to  teach  hygiene,  physiology  and  prevention 
of  industrial  accidents  efficiently,  46 ;  to  train  for  a  live- 
lihood, 61 ;  to  understand  industry,  82 ;  to  teach  history 
of  industry,  82 ;  to  evolve  science  of  business,  121 ;  to 
train  for  business,  129,  345,  346 ;  to  train  for  home,  146, 
345,  346;  to  teach  music  in,  162;  to  teach  thrift,  166;  to 
train  for  vocations,  263,  345,  346 ;  to  interest  pupils,  274, 
329;  to  teach  citizenship,  354,  355;  to  teach  civics  in, 
362;  failures  summarized,  345,  346. 


416  INDEX 

Schools,  ideal  system :  outlined,  28,  366-376 ;  adapted  to  needs 
of  all,  367;  no  limits,  368;  at  public  expense,  369;  in- 
dustrial surveys  in,  371 ;  research  work  in,  372 ;  elemen- 
tary schools  in,  29,  372-374;  correspondence  schools  in, 
373;  evening  courses  in,  373;  continuation  schools  in, 
373-377;  part-time  education  in,  373,  375-377;  industrial 
schools  in,  373 ;  prevocational  schools  in,  373,  374 ;  voca- 
tional schools  in,  373,  375 ;  trade  schools  in,  373. 

Schools,  national  aid:  312;  grants  in  aid,  England,  314,  315; 
to  vocational  schools,  309-326. 

Schools,  state  aid :  312 ;  to  vocational  schools,  319-321. 

Schools,  text-books:  revision  of,  necessary  for  elementary 
schools,  193;  agricultural,  111. 

Science:  a  part  of  agricultural  education,  12;  not  applied  to 
practise,  24;  of  business,  119;  of  business,  not  evolved 
by  schools,  121 ;  general  principles  of  business,  121. 

Scientific  research:  institutes  for,  66,  67;  in  Germany,  66;  ag- 
ricultural, 244;  placein  ideal  system  of  education,  372. 

Scientists,  produced  by  agricultural  schools,  49,  99. 

Seasonal  part-time  schools,  227. 

Seeds,  selection,  92,  109. 

Self-preservation:  in  primitive  society,  7;  in  modern  society, 
8;  education  for,  9,  15,  20,  179;  failure  of  schools  to 
teach,  46. 

Self-reliance :  industrial  education  to  develop,  63f  81 ;  lacking 
in  business,  129. 

Sewing,  education  in,  148,  152,  153. 

Sheldon  School  of  Correspondence,  237. 

Shops,  give  way  to  factories,  10. 

Sick,  care  of,  160. 

Sickness,  losses  from,  176. 

Silk,  selection,  152. 

Skilled  labor:  undeveloped  in  America,  63;  in  Germany,  65; 
industrial  education  to  promote,  82;  value  of,  130; 
sources  of,  215. 

Skilled  trades,  schools  for,  203. 

Smith-Hughes  Bill,  324. 

Smith-Lever  Law,  1914,  313. 

Smoke  nuisance :  354 ;  waste  through,  168. 

Smut  in  oats,  losses  from,  172. 

Snedden,  David,  297,  328. 

Social  justice,  356. 

Social  unrest :  67^  72,  348 ;  and  vocational  education,  317,  318. 

Social  workers :   72 ;  opportunity  for,  78. 

Socializing,  of  the  schools,  366-376. 

Society,  progress  of,  8,  18. 

Soda-water,  waste  from  use  of,  166. 


INDEX  417 

Soil:  exhaustibility  of,  50,  164;  chemistry  of,  109;  crops  not 
equal  to  possibilities  of,  166,  167 ;  erosion  of,  171 ;  waste 
of,  171. 

South  American  trade:   124;  Spanish  language,  125. 

Special  libraries,  for  industries,  255,  256. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  6,  7,  17,  52,  61,  116,  159,  347. 

"Standpatism,"  in  education,  31. 

State  aid :  to  local  schools,  312 ;  grants  in  aid,  England,  314, 
315 ;  to  vocational  schools,  319-321. 

State  Normal  School,  Albany,  N.  Y.,  teachers  for  trades,  295. 

State  Normal  School,  Athens,  Ga.,  304. 

States:  and  education,  310-312;  and  vocational  education,  319- 
321;  inequalities  in  financial  resources,  322,  323;  duties 
of,  under  system  of  national  aid  to  vocational  educa- 
tion, 324,  325. 

Stenography,  education  for,  203. 

Street  railways,  inadequacy,  354. 

Strikes:  77,  348;  strike  breakers,  210;  and  vocational  educa- 
tion, 317. 

Strong,  Josiah,  79. 

Structural  iron  workers,  66. 

Styles,  in  dress,  153. 

Superintendents,  education  of,  131. 

Surveys:  industrial,  35,  63,  85,  86;  for  vocational  guidance, 
269,  283 ;  in  ideal  system  of  education,  371. 

Surveys,  rural,  303-305. 

Suzzalo,  Henry,  372. 

System,  on  the  farm,  113. 

Teachers:  not  fitted  to  teach  vocational  subjects,  297;  number 
of,  302 ;  average  service,  303 ;  rural,  51,  300-306. 

Teachers  of  vocational  subjects:  212,  285-308;  prevocational 
subjects,  287;  experience  in  life,  in  teaching  and  in  vo- 
cation taught  necessary  to,  288,  290-294;  lack  of  sym- 
pathy with  new  system,  291;  agricultural  subjects,  292; 
domestic  science,  294;  trades,  293,  294;  national  aid  for 
training  of,  296,  324;  for  girls'  trade  schools,  298;  for 
commercial  schools,  298,  299;  for  rural  schools,  51,  301- 
306;  experimentation  in  training  of,  307. 

Technical  colleges,  trade  schools  aspiring  to  become,  32. 

Technical  journals,  in  libraries,  254. 

Technical  skill:  undeveloped  in  American,  63;  in  Germany, 
65;  industrial  education  to  promote,  82;  value  of,  130; 
sources  of,  215. 

Teeth,  care  of  children's,  160. 

Temperance  instruction,  in  schools,  inefficient,  46. 

Tenantry,  increase  of,  50,  100. 

Tenements,  355. 


418  INDEX 

Territorial  expansion,  127. 

Tests  of  ability,  by  psychology,  272. 

Text-books:  revision  necessary  for  elementary  schools,  193; 
agricultural,  111. 

Textile  mills:  promotion  in,  76;  part-time  education  in,  77. 

Theory,  versus  practise,  23. 

Thrift,  failure  of  schools  to  teach,  166. 

Tobacco,  waste  from  use  of,  166. 

Tolman,  W.  H.,  79,  80. 

'Tools  of  knowledge" :  taught  in  elementary  schools,  29,  186, 
189;  in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 

Trade :  with  Europe,  123 ;  foreign,  123 ;  education  for  foreign, 
125 ;  with  South  America,  124 ;  domestic,  126. 

Trade  catalogs,  in  libraries,  254. 

Trade  extension  courses,  220. 

Trade  journals,  in  libraries,  254. 

Trade  schools:  entrance  requirements,  32;  private,  68;  types 
of,  71 ;  for  negroes,  71 ;  corporation,  98 ;  for  carpentry, 
71,  238,  241 ;  for  skilled  trades,  203 ;  rarity  of,  203 ;  for 
printing,  71,  238;  for  machine  trades,  203;  equipment 
of,  208 ;  teachers,  285-308 ;  teachers  for  girls,  298 ;  place 
in  ideal  system  of  education,  373. 

Trade  unions :  attitude  on  apprenticeship,  69 ;  attitude  on  in- 
dustrial education,  70;  spread  of,  72;  organs  of,  in  li- 
braries, 254;  American  Federation  of  Labor,  69,  210, 
346;  International  Typographical  Union,  71,  238. 

Trades :  60-88 ;  education  for  workers,  already  engaged  in,  25, 
213-230;  limited  education  for,  30;  which,  to  be  taught 
determined  by  local  conditions,  37;  number  of  em- 
ployees in,  58 ;  offering  opportunities  for  industrial  edu- 
cation, 83 ;  literature  of,  254 ;  failure  of  schools  to  train 
for,  345,  346. 

Transportation:  education  for,  120,  122,  133;  federal  regula- 
tion of,  132;  reorganization,  132;  waste  in,  133;  corre- 
spondence courses,  237,  238;  School  of  Railway  Signal- 
ing, Utica,  N.  Y.,  238;  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Educa- 
tional Bureau,  237 ;  by  water,  122. 

Truck  gardening,  107,  149,  156. 

Unemployment:  73;  employment  offices,  one  phase  of  voca- 
tional guidance,  269. 

Union  Pacific  Railroad  Educational  Bureau  of  Information, 
237. 

United  States  Bureau  of  Labor,  280,  282. 

United  States  Bureau  of  the  Census,  reports,  85,  273,  282,  321, 
352. 

United  States  Commission  on  Vocational  Education,  48,  162, 
295,  322. 

United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  39,  42. 


INDEX  419 

United  States  Congress,  vocational  education  bill  before,  out- 
lined, 324. 

United  States  consuls,  training,  125. 

United  States  Department  of  Agriculture:  98;  bulletins  of, 
245. 

United  States  Department  of  Commerce,  282. 

United  States  Steel  Corporation,  industrial  accidents,  81. 

Universal  education :  21-38,  58,  341 ;  progressive  quality  essen- 
tial to,  25;  plan  for,  27;  failure  of  democracy  to  pro- 
vide, 30;  failure  of  schools  to  provide,  31;  influences 
thwarting  development  of,  31 ;  vocational  education  a 
step  in,  32,  342 ;  occupations  the  basis  of,  33 ;  problems 
of,  in  a  democracy,  33 ;  vocational,  210 ;  ideal  system  of 
education  to  furnish,  at  public  expense,  366,  376. 

University  extension  courses :  98,  101,  211,  220,  225,  231-248; 
universities  maintaining,  233,  235. 

University  of  Kansas :  extension  courses,  233 ;  course  in  car- 
pentry, 240. 

University  of  Minnesota,  extension  courses,  233. 

University  of  Wisconsin,  extension  courses,  233,  235,  236,  238. 

Urban  population:  90;  farm-to-city  movement,  50,  90,  96,  112. 

Utility,  basis  of  art,  334. 

Values,  women  as  judges  of,  145. 

Variability,  of  environment  and  individuals,  22,  26,  367. 

Vegetable  gardens,  107,  149,  156. 

Ventilation,  factories,  178. 

Vice,  355. 

Vocation  Bureau  and  Breadwinners'  Institute  of  Boston,  269. 

Vocational  education:  opportunities  for,  28;  a  step  in  uni- 
versal education,  32;  a  part  of  a  liberal  education,  32; 
in  early  times,  47;  Federal  Commission  on,  48,  162,  295, 
322 ;  effect  of  European  war  on,  62,  123,  325 ;  causes  for, 
j^j  and  conservation,  164-181,  201 ;  to  train  for  self- 
preservation,  179:  prevocational  studies  in  elementary 
school,  182-196;  fundamental  studies,  186;  as  a  public 
protection,  2Qll  value  of,  to  workers,  214 ;  for, those 
already  Engaged  in  work,  213-230;  and  libraries,  249- 
261 ;  inadequate  without  vocational  guidance,  279,  283 ; 
cost  of,  309;  who  to  bear  cost,  320,  321 ;  a  national  need, 
2JL5J  social  significance  of.317:  and  strikes,  317;  and  the 
state,  319,  320;  and  community,  111,  148,  320,  321,  325; 
and  culture,  J27-343 ;  and  citizenship,  344=26£;  in  pris- 
ons, 359;  as  a  preventive  of  crime,  359,  360;  organiza- 
tions interested  in,  393. 

Vocational  education  and  national  aid:  309-326;  training  of 
teachers,  296,  324;  agricultural  colleges,  312;  Morrill 
Act  of  1862,  312;  Smith-Lever  Act  of  1914,  313;  local, 


420  INDEX 

Vocational  education  and  national  aid — Continued. 

state  and  national  cooperation,  315,  325,  326;  migration 
of  workers  an  argument  for,  321;  unequal  financial  re- 
sources of  states  and  local  units,  an  argument  for,  322, 
323 ;  bill  before  Congress  outlined,  324. 

Vocational  guidance:  111,  191,  262-284;  a  function  of  elemen- 
tary schools,  183;  libraries  to  assist,  260;  distribution 
among  occupations  to  be  regulated  by,  264 ;  employment 
offices,  a  minor  phase  of,  269,  281 ;  examination  of  indi- 
vidual bent,  269;  factors  in,  269,  270;  and  experimental 
psychology,  271,  272,  284;  and  conservation,  273,  284; 
necessary  to  vocational  education,  279,  283 ;  not  to  be  a 
forced  process,  280;  meaning  of,  280;  complexities  of, 
281,  282;  dependence  of,  on  private  associations  for 
data,  282 ;  place  in  ideal  system  of  education,  374. 

Vocational  instincts,  279. 

Vocational  reading,  27-29,  211,  225,  249,  250,  261,  373. 

Vocational  schools:  197-212;  joint,  38;  definition  of,  197,  198; 
types  of,  198;  extent  of,  for  professions,  in  United 
States,  200;  for  defectives,  delinquents  and  dependents, 
202;  development,  201,  202;  success  of,  proved,  204; 
basic  ideas  of,  204;  age  of  students  in,  204,  205;  should 
be  adapted  to  trade  taught,  205;  prepare  all-round 
workers,  206;  train  for  definite  things,  207;  equipment 
necessary  to,  208;  supply  deficiencies  of  apprenticeship, 
209;  to  be  established  widely,  210;  universal  system  of, 
210;  core  of  educational  system,  211;  place  in  ideal  sys- 
tem of  education,  373,  375. 

Vocational  schools,  teachers :  212,  285-308 ;  prevocational  sub- 
jects, 287;  experience  in  life,  in  teaching  and  in  voca- 
tion taught  necessary  to,  288,  290-294 ;  lack  of  sympathy 
with  new  system,  291;  agricultural  subjects,  292;  do- 
mestic science,  294;  trades,  293,  294;  national  aid  for 
training  of,  296,  324;  for  girls'  trade  schools,  298;  for 
commercial  schools,  298,  299;  for  rural  schools,  51,  301- 
306;  experimentation  in  training  of,  307. 

Vocations:  increase  of,  in  modern  society,  10;  education  for 
those  already  engaged  in,  25,  213-230;  which,  to  be 
taught  determined  by  local  conditions,  37;  failure  of 
schools  to  train  for,  263,  345,  346;  number  trained  for, 
at  public  expense,  263,  283 ;  overcrowded,  264,  283 ;  dis- 
tribution among,  265 ;  unwise  choice,  274. 

Wall  paper,  selection,  155. 

War  in  Europe :  62,  123 ;  and  vocational  education,  325. 

Ward,  Lester  R,  21,  26,  49,  367,  368. 

Waste :  of  resources,  164-181 ;  of  energy,  180. 

Water  power,  to  supersede  coal,  169. 

Water  transportation,  122. 


INDEX  421 

Wealth,  United  States,  128. 

Webb,  Sidney,  314. 

Weeds :  109 ;  losses  from,  165,  173. 

Wheat  specials,  244. 

Winslow,  Charles  H.,  86,  87. 

Wisconsin  Report  on  Industrial  and  Agricultural  Training, 
235. 

Women  and  girls :  average  term  of  employment,  177 ;  trades 
offering  opportunities  for,  84;  business  education  for, 
144;  agricultural  education  for,  144;  industrial  educa- 
tion for,  144 ;  domestic  science  for,  143-163 ;  department 
stores,  cheap  clerks,  133 ;  drudgery  of  home  labor,  161 ; 
women's  clubs,  161 ;  as  judges  of  values,  145 ;  need  of 
trained,  145 ;  labor  of,  modified  in  modern  society,  145 ; 
education  for  motherhood,  159;  spenders  of  family  in- 
come, 158. 

Wood:  waste  in,  170;  preservatives,  170;  waste  in  products, 
171. 

Work,  and  culture,  327-343. 

Workers:  education  for,  25;  schools  should  keep  in  touch 
with  until  eighteen,  27;  and  libraries,  253;  distribution, 
211,  268;  distribution  among  occupations,  265;  un- 
trained, 277 ;  mobility  of,  321,  322 ;  all-round,  vocational 
schools  to  turn  out,  206. 

Workmanship :  undeveloped  in  America,  63 ;  in  Germany,  65 ; 
industrial  education  to  promote,  82;  value  of,  130; 
sources  of,  215. 

Workmen,  American,  63. 

Xenophon,  265. 

Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  trade  schools,  71. 

Zacher,  Dr.,  80. 


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